Went in on Friday. I asked if I could discuss another issue and was (politely) told that because it’s a ten minute appointment that I’d have to come back again to discuss that issue.
Which seemed…well both shit and a recipe for absolute disaster given how difficult it is for most people to see their GP even once.
So, was she right or should I be more brazen next time?
You’re right that it’s frustrating, but it’s a no win situation (I’m a GP myself, btw).
- There aren’t enough GPs, there just aren’t, so time is scarce. All the surgeries are overloaded.
- each issue NEEDS time. People feel very confident of what they need sometimes, but that isn’t how medicine works. We need to assess, get the details, to give a right diagnosis and treatment
- every extra little thing, borrowed minute, carries forward. An extra 10 minutes at every other appointment turns into hours by the end of the day - unacceptable delays for patients and the staff.
- there is so much added paperwork for each of these things. Most of us finish our clinic at 4-5 and then still have a couple of hours of paperwork.
- most of us are so very burnt out at this point, and appointments becoming more complicated, demands getting higher, pushes us further towards giving up.
It isn’t the patient’s fault, but it is the reality. People fall through the cracks, important things gets missed, we know this and hate it too. We call it moral injury, the phenomenon of building pain because we can’t actually meet people’s needs or fully do what is right.
I hope the reply is clear that this isn’t push back. We wish we had more time with each patient. We wish we didn’t need to reign it in, but we’re already stretched too thin. We know it’s frustrating. We’re frustrated too
I’m a GP myself, btw
Bullshit. You’re a Physician Associate aren’t you? I just went through all the “doctors” on my local GPs surgery and a lot of them are PAs. Including the ones who said "we can’t prescribe anti-psychotics anymore as GPs"*. Even though I was begging them to cos the voices were killing me. Couple of weeks later I was taken to hospital in a coma after a suicide attempt - cos the voices wouldn’t stop!! And no one would help me.
Oh and I also went to my local A&E 5 fucking times begging for help cos the voices were threatening to torture and kill me.
Yes I said the magic words - “I’m going to kill myself”.
They said: “Sorry but we’ve no beds - go home”.
I’m tempted to complain to the NHS, hospital and MP but considering I do just want to fucking die, still, what’s the point?
/Rant
*They said only psychiatrists can prescribe them! I’ve been prescribed quetiapine before by GPs but apparently something changed. Personally I think it’s just PA’s can’t prescribe them.
There’s a sign up in my GP’s surgery saying it’s only one problem per appointment.
A quick Google suggests this is common practice and has been since before the pandemic in some places. It’s even in the news now.
Quite where you draw the line is tricky - my auntie was on a lot of pills for pain, anxiety, etc and they’d just tweak one at a time for one condition. It took her having a crisis during lockdown for a doctor to get involved with the lot. She’s in a secure dementia ward now after another relapse she didn’t come back from, but I wonder if a more holistic approach earlier might have helped.
You can request a longer slot if you have multiple things to discuss.
Honestly, it was most likely they were really being pushed for time with every appt, and were concerned about pushing everyone else in the queue late.
You can request it but quite a lot of them will say no.
Mine let’s you book a double appointment for multiple issues - which is good because it took almost 2 years for me to find a GP accepting new patients, that accepted that I was in their catchment area (my previous GP, less than 5 minutes walk away, decided I wasn’t in their catchment area any more and removed me from their practice. The 4 nearest ones, all a mile away or less also agreed I wasn’t in their catchment area). Anyway I’ve got one an hour’s walk away and I’m glad of it. Oh, and my point being after waiting 2 years for an appointment (and the extra 2 months from registering), I had quite a few things I needed them to check over!
If be very surprised if this wasn’t just: oh god please don’t make me late for the next patient I would really like to get home to see my kids type thing.
If you were limited discussing a single ailment by policy then we add a country have huge problems.
We, as a country, have a big problem.
It’s called the government. 😆
