GP surgeries

I think you really need to put your foot down with the receptionist, ring back and say your Dr wants to see you and you want a face to face appointment. Take no nonsense.

My husband had a stroke 4 wks ago at 8.30am..lost the sight in his eye etc etc....I drove straight to the GP surgery as 999 were busy and had a long wait,to be met by the receptionist....when I told her that we needed to see the GP as an emergency explaining what had happened....she told my husband that he had to go to the opticians as "the surgery don't deal with eye problems"...I insisted we saw a GP straight away... To be told again by the receptionist that eye problems are dealt with by opticians!!.No way would she let us see a GP....we rushed to the local opticians telling him what had happened....he scanned by husbands eyes and confirmed that he had indeed got a massive blood clot behind his eye and off we went to the hospital as an emergency.....ending up with my husband having emergency surgery and a 7in scar down his neck and the loss of feeling all over his face/ears and loss of voice due to nerve damage....the surgeon said my husband was lucky he had not died.....I complained to the surgery about the receptionists behaviour and refusal to let us see a GP or a nurse, who would have been able to pick up the signs of a stroke like I had and maybe had been able to get access to an ambulance faster....the extra stress that receptionist made us suffer was totally unacceptable....the GP contacted us when my husband was in hospital as the stroke specialist/optician and surgeon had contacted the surgery with details of what we had been put through by the receptionist etc....we saw the GP a few days later who was very apologetic and said the receptionist did not understand the signs of a stroke and thought my husband needed an optician!
The receptionist did not even ask my husband his name so the GP had no idea what had happened until the stroke specialist etc contacted them....the surgery had no record of us attending the surgery because the receptionist was too busy trying to get rid of us and stopping us from seeing a GP... to even ask for a name...
We have not been to the surgery since and I just hope we never have to deal with that receptionist again.....I have written a letter of complaint asking that receptionists are given more training and to actually listen to patients when they present with a medical emergency....

Iam64

The pressure on General Practice seems to be overwhelming the service. Paddy of course you should be seen, the receptionist sounds like the dragon type who see their job as putting patients in the wrong.

Our outstanding practice operates a policy where for emergency, you phone the receptionist who arranged for the doctor to call, usually within the hour. For routine, you complete a form which is triaged by the doctors. My last form resulted in an appointment with my doctor of choice. She was thorough, friendly and said how good it was to see me after 2 years. When I asked how she was, she talked about the doctors disliking the new system as much as patients do. She agreed with me that it’s causing stress all round. She looked exhausted.

I read that GP’s are seeing three times the number of patients than their union considers safe. They’re fearful of missing or misdiagnosing. I had to use the 111 service at the weekend. Started to phone at 12 noon. Call answered at 1.40pm. Spoke to two brusk operatives, both took me through a long questionnaire, many questions in no way related to my problem. At 5pm I was called by a local nurse practitioner. She said I’m phoning about this head ache, do you really need to be seen? I breathed deeply and explained what was happening. She immediately agreed I should be seen urgently. The appointment was for 6.30 , I was seen at 7.45pm. The good news was the doctor was from my surgery, knew me, was very thorough, kind and prescribed immediately. He advised me to call the surgery if not beginning to improve in 48 hours.
The system is overwhelmed. No wonder people arrive at A and E in desperation

THIS

The service is overwhelmed, surgeries are managing the best they can with loss of staff, sickness, rule changes, and low morale after the last few years.

Complaining, demanding, insisting etc - it’s actually unhelpful and adds to the already big issues as above. Remember these people
hav e been working flat out through Covid and were already broken before that. The receptionists are only doing what they have been told to do by the partners.

Appreciate in this case it sounds like there was an error - Gp would normally book the appt themselves or write in notes F2F needed.

Please stop the negative rhetoric though. If you want action write to your MP, demand, complain and insist at them as they have the power to fund the NHS better and look to find ways of recruiting and retaining staff.

This helps if you want to see the funding and reasons behind my comments

tobyandsocks

My husband had a stroke 4 wks ago at 8.30am..lost the sight in his eye etc etc....I drove straight to the GP surgery as 999 were busy and had a long wait,to be met by the receptionist....when I told her that we needed to see the GP as an emergency explaining what had happened....she told my husband that he had to go to the opticians as "the surgery don't deal with eye problems"...I insisted we saw a GP straight away... To be told again by the receptionist that eye problems are dealt with by opticians!!.No way would she let us see a GP....we rushed to the local opticians telling him what had happened....he scanned by husbands eyes and confirmed that he had indeed got a massive blood clot behind his eye and off we went to the hospital as an emergency.....ending up with my husband having emergency surgery and a 7in scar down his neck and the loss of feeling all over his face/ears and loss of voice due to nerve damage....the surgeon said my husband was lucky he had not died.....I complained to the surgery about the receptionists behaviour and refusal to let us see a GP or a nurse, who would have been able to pick up the signs of a stroke like I had and maybe had been able to get access to an ambulance faster....the extra stress that receptionist made us suffer was totally unacceptable....the GP contacted us when my husband was in hospital as the stroke specialist/optician and surgeon had contacted the surgery with details of what we had been put through by the receptionist etc....we saw the GP a few days later who was very apologetic and said the receptionist did not understand the signs of a stroke and thought my husband needed an optician!
The receptionist did not even ask my husband his name so the GP had no idea what had happened until the stroke specialist etc contacted them....the surgery had no record of us attending the surgery because the receptionist was too busy trying to get rid of us and stopping us from seeing a GP... to even ask for a name...
We have not been to the surgery since and I just hope we never have to deal with that receptionist again.....I have written a letter of complaint asking that receptionists are given more training and to actually listen to patients when they present with a medical emergency....

I’m really sorry this happened to your husband. We need better education about where to go as lines are blurred now with non emergencies at ED and this at Gp.

Your GP can do nothing in an emergency. If 999 are busy ( that’s another funding issue!!) it’s got to be straight to ED.

Agree the receptionist could have done better signposting BUT this is an emergency which needs to be on the hospital not the Gp surgery

Receptionists are just that - receptionists. It's ridiculous that they have been given so much power. I know surgeries are busy but it's no excuse for how some patients are being fobbed off.
However I do think people should complain more to their MP. That's what I do.
And I would have gone straight to ED.

No it is not the public's fault,nor is it down to poor NHS funding. GP practices are private businesses and as such it is their responsibility to pay for and train better reception staff. This is no longer "a nice little clerical job" it is being used by many practices as first line triage and as such the staff shoukd be better qualified, better trained and better paid. I enquired about a part time reception position at my local surgery some years ago and was shocked to find that it is a minimum wage job.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing...999 were busy I did ring them....our nearest hospital for emergencies is 15miles away..at 8.30am in the morning driving to Bath would have been at least 45-55 mins....so the nearest person was the GP....where I took my husband where I thought he would be looked after.....obviously that wasnt to be.....the last thing I wanted was for him to become very unwell in the car with only me with him.....hence the visit to the GP....
How many times are we told NOT to go to the hospitals to go to the GP's......either way it seems we are in a no win situation....

It's shocking isn't it?

These days GPs are off-loading most of their paritients onto physios and nurses etc.

I have an ongoing problem that needs to be checked out properly. By a DOCTOR.
They get paid enough.
The whole system these days disgusts me and I dread to think how many serious problems are being missed and overlooked because the GP can't be arsed to see their patients in person any more.

We are in a similar position to tobyandsocks in that our hospital is over an hour's drive away although its still quicker to drive there rather than risk the wait for an ambulance.

Our surgery is 50 yards away. We always used to just walk over to make an appointment but no more. Living close to the doctor (a selling point when we moved here) is no longer an advantage.

The best way we've found of getting an appropriate appointment - which can be a phone call or seeing the nurse practitioner, it doesn't need to always be a GP - is to use their website. This gives provision to describe better what you want. The office person who reads it is less likely to miss-hear or wrongly interpret the problem. Since mastering this we've always got the desired response. Plus you don't need to sit on the end of a phone for half an hour.

I should add that DH has had much better service since he did complain to the practice manager when he couldn't get to a face to face GP appointment despite the practice nurse saying he needed it!

We have noticed that in our practice there's a good list of GPs - but all except one are part time. I wonder what they do the rest of the time? Are they doing private practice or just don't need the money? Ladywee?

Nfkdumpling I've had better since I complained to my MP.

Recently had a head injury. Rang 999. They asked me questions and decided not to come although I was in a state. 3 weeks later got CT scan. Doctor at A&E said it should have been done immediately following accident.

Sorry need to add went to Doctor day after accident and he didn't suggest scan either.

Your GP can do nothing in an emergency. If 999 are busy ( that’s another funding issue!!) it’s got to be straight to ED.

Depending on the emergency, that really isn't true.

I was sitting in a GP's office going through my appointment with him - in Norway - when the 'phone rang. He picked it up and suddenly ran out excusing himself to say there was an emergency.

A mother had rushed in with her child who'd stopped breathing. My GP resuscitated him with chest compression and mouth to mouth. Then called for an air ambulance (common in this part of Norway). If the mother had driven the 40 odd miles to the hospital, the child would've probably been dead on arrival.

Doctors know what 'first aid' to give in an emergency - they may not know the cause of it, but they know when something's seriously wrong...

And most people know that a sudden lost of vision is a red flag, not a condition that requires you to pop in to the opticians.

If receptionists are going to act as first-line medics making triage decisions... then they need some training in medicine.

NfkDumpling

We are in a similar position to tobyandsocks in that our hospital is over an hour's drive away although its still quicker to drive there rather than risk the wait for an ambulance.

Our surgery is 50 yards away. We always used to just walk over to make an appointment but no more. Living close to the doctor (a selling point when we moved here) is no longer an advantage.

The best way we've found of getting an appropriate appointment - which can be a phone call or seeing the nurse practitioner, it doesn't need to always be a GP - is to use their website. This gives provision to describe better what you want. The office person who reads it is less likely to miss-hear or wrongly interpret the problem. Since mastering this we've always got the desired response. Plus you don't need to sit on the end of a phone for half an hour.

I should add that DH has had much better service since he did complain to the practice manager when he couldn't get to a face to face GP appointment despite the practice nurse saying he needed it!

We have noticed that in our practice there's a good list of GPs - but all except one are part time. I wonder what they do the rest of the time? Are they doing private practice or just don't need the money? Ladywee?

A day in GP core hours is 8-630 so 10hours. Sometimes there are early morning or late surgeries so can be a 12 hour day - these are part of the NHS contract.
Full time is counted as 4 full days so approx 40 hours.
Some will have childcare commitments so do less.
Some are involved in other work such as commissioning, medical education ( lecturing, medical students, junior doctors), some have a specialist interest and do clinics in this at the hospital eg dermatology, women’s health, some spread their work through the week by doing some routine work in surgery and some out of hours work in the evenings/weekends. That’s all NHS work.
Difficult to be a private GP - much less common than other specialities. There are some virtual providers doing this I believe nowadays.

snowberryZ

It's shocking isn't it?

These days GPs are off-loading most of their paritients onto physios and nurses etc.

I have an ongoing problem that needs to be checked out properly. By a DOCTOR.
They get paid enough.
The whole system these days disgusts me and I dread to think how many serious problems are being missed and overlooked because the GP can't be arsed to see their patients in person any more.

The pay has steadily dropped.
All the funding from NHS now is for allied professionals as the powers that be determine these are needed over more doctors. Lots of funding to get paramedics, social prescribers, physios, pharmacists but not doctors. Many Gps acknowledge that this doesn’t help their workload or patient care.

The average General practitioner salary in Scotland is £88,590. This is 2.5% more than the average national salary for General practitioner jobs. The average Scotland General practitioner salary is 178.2% more than the average salary across Scotland. The minimum starting GP salary is £84.630.
I guess your idea of poorly paid is different from mine

I don't have a gripe with GP or how much they are paid, I do however have a real issue with highly qualified medical professionals using minimum wage staff as gatekeepers to triage their patients.

The fundamental problem is that there are not enough GPS to do the amount of work that’s required of them. General practice is not a popular choice for doctors when they finish their training, not enough doctors are trained, and many leave the NHS to work overseas where they are generally better treated, or leave medicine altogether. I wouldn’t be a GP for £88,000 a year. What other job do you train 10 years for before qualifying, then sit all day seeing people’s complaints one after the other - and then get the brickbats because you ‘aren’t doing enough’?

Casdon

The fundamental problem is that there are not enough GPS to do the amount of work that’s required of them. General practice is not a popular choice for doctors when they finish their training, not enough doctors are trained, and many leave the NHS to work overseas where they are generally better treated, or leave medicine altogether. I wouldn’t be a GP for £88,000 a year. What other job do you train 10 years for before qualifying, then sit all day seeing people’s complaints one after the other - and then get the brickbats because you ‘aren’t doing enough’?

Thankyou. This is one of the issues.

Dickens

^Your GP can do nothing in an emergency. If 999 are busy ( that’s another funding issue!!) it’s got to be straight to ED.^

Depending on the emergency, that really isn't true.

I was sitting in a GP's office going through my appointment with him - in Norway - when the 'phone rang. He picked it up and suddenly ran out excusing himself to say there was an emergency.

A mother had rushed in with her child who'd stopped breathing. My GP resuscitated him with chest compression and mouth to mouth. Then called for an air ambulance (common in this part of Norway). If the mother had driven the 40 odd miles to the hospital, the child would've probably been dead on arrival.

Doctors know what 'first aid' to give in an emergency - they may not know the cause of it, but they know when something's seriously wrong...

And most people know that a sudden lost of vision is a red flag, not a condition that requires you to pop in to the opticians.

If receptionists are going to act as first-line medics making triage decisions... then they need some training in medicine.

We are talking about UK, specifically England as the contracts and funding for the NHS are different in wales and Scotland. I’m a retired doctor, married to a doctor with doctor children and many doctor colleagues, many in GP. I may not know a lot about many things, but I do know the NHS funding and services very well and GP is NOT an emergency service I’m afraid in England. I am aware that general practice is set up differently in other countries.

Of course they can do first aid - generally we are talking life and death stuff -CPR, give some oxygen - But most medical emergencies require more than that eg investigations, treatment, done urgently which is the exact point of the emergency department, regardless of how far you live from it.

Casdon

The fundamental problem is that there are not enough GPS to do the amount of work that’s required of them. General practice is not a popular choice for doctors when they finish their training, not enough doctors are trained, and many leave the NHS to work overseas where they are generally better treated, or leave medicine altogether. I wouldn’t be a GP for £88,000 a year. What other job do you train 10 years for before qualifying, then sit all day seeing people’s complaints one after the other - and then get the brickbats because you ‘aren’t doing enough’?

Most jobs don’t require the absolute excellence academically to get in, then 5-6 years undergraduate training at 9k per year now, then postgraduate training, then specialist training and exams. If you are taking the absolute elite only into the courses you would expect that to be well
Remunerated.

Clearly, the money is an issue for many regardless of how much the public believe it to be worth. If it was so easy to just go part time and swan around being paid millions to do very little we would in reality not have a recruitment crisis as everyone would want to do it, and those doing it would not leave! So there must be a discrepancy between the public’s beliefs, media’s painted image and the actual job?

I dread to think how much precious money I have cost the nhs in the last couple of years.
Due entirely to letters going missing, lack of communication between the hospitals and my gp, a hospital discharge with an important finding not being divulged to me, resulting in another a and e visit.
Work smart, not hard, would be a good starting point for my gp.

Our GP surgery is similar to the ones described on here - you have to ring at 8.00 to get an appointment (if you're lucky), you are more likely to see a HCA than a doctor, nine times out of ten you are referred to a clinic at a hospital miles away, and so on.

I understand that Covid got in the way of a lot, and I understand that funding issues mean that there is a shortage of GPs. What I don't understand is why, given the shortages, the website says that they are still taking more patients. It seems madness, when they can't cope properly with the ones they have. Dentists turn away patients all the time, so why do GPs keep taking them?

LadyWee

snowberryZ

It's shocking isn't it?

These days GPs are off-loading most of their paritients onto physios and nurses etc.

I have an ongoing problem that needs to be checked out properly. By a DOCTOR.
They get paid enough.
The whole system these days disgusts me and I dread to think how many serious problems are being missed and overlooked because the GP can't be arsed to see their patients in person any more.

The pay has steadily dropped.
All the funding from NHS now is for allied professionals as the powers that be determine these are needed over more doctors. Lots of funding to get paramedics, social prescribers, physios, pharmacists but not doctors. Many Gps acknowledge that this doesn’t help their workload or patient care.

Thanks LadyWee. Our list of doctors looks really good for the number of patients until the days they're 'on' is looked at. It gives a false impression that we have a full compliment when we obviously haven't. A couple only work two days a week, one day in each surgery so if that's your doctor s/he'll not be able to use his personal knowledge of your circumstances as happened 'in the old days'. Seems a shame.

Fortunately my DH, who doesn't like to make a fuss and didn't want to bother the NHS, is building up a very good relationship with one of the nurse practitioners who knew when he needed a face to face appointment. For him to complain took a lot!

Thanks for your contributions Lady Wee.
It seems a positive to me that good surgeries now have nurse practitioners, physiotherapists and mental health practitioners.

Im immune suppressed and for the past three weeks had a truly awful upper and lower respiratory infection. I had a phone consult with my doctor, anti biotics prescribed, detailed discussion, advice on current meds and told to phone if not improving in 48 hours. A week later, phone consult with nurse practitioner, antibiotics changed. I saw an emergency doctor at the weekend who did a thorough exam, pronounced me rather poorly, prescribed steroids to reduce inflammation/wheezing. His advice, if not feeling better in 48 hours, call my doctor. I did that and got an appointment within the hour. Been referred for follow ups.
Apologies for this long personal post. The 111 experience at the weekend was slow, cumbersome and the two people dealing with me were unhelpful with poor customer skills. Other than that, my experience over the past 3 weeks has been of excellent care from the GP practice.