, will this ever happen. My surgery is shut Saturdays and Sundays, but not only that, Thursday and Friday afternoons. My GP seems to spend vast amounts of time on holiday or away at meetings. It takes two week at the earliest to get an appointment, and if you ask to see a different GP, you get a fob off appointment, ie. they do the absolute minimum and tell you to come back later and see your own GP. I tried on line repeat prescriptions, but that seems to be far from ideal, as what I wanted had not been added to the list. The whole set up is a joke, they never answer the phone. You can however get an emergency appointment on days when your GP is actually there, it involves turning up around midday, and waiting, and waiting. Any thoughts? Am I being really hard on our pressed GPs. Or are they getting paid a vast amount of money just to fill in red tape? I'd much rather go to hospital than my GP, at least they have some kind of system, and actually get things done.
Can't get in the car park of our local surgery these days for the smount of staff they now have working there, loads more admin and managers without any more GPs, open less hours, closed for training sessions (and their staff really do need them), time for repeat presciptions to be ready has doubled, etc. Similar sort of shambles at the local hospital. Could only be worse if they were spread over a greater number of hours.
Our surgery is open Saturday mornings and to eight each night . I had an inflamed leg sprain on return from holiday. I got an emergency appointment for 10 that morning ( a standard appointment takes over a week ! ) Prescribed anti inflam tablets which I collected from the onsite pharmacy in 5 minutes. The pharmacy also looks after my repeat prescription . I can collect my medication every month , they open 7 days week from 7am until 8pm , a superb service. So it seems surgery standards vary vastly over the country.
The way things are going around here they'll close ours, health centre closed,school closed, post office closed and letter boxs gone and now the last bank in town is going to close soon But we do have 5 pubs
That sounds really fantastic Harry. It would be great to get something similar to that around here. But very unlikely.
Pretty much the same here Pete. Have to wait at least two weeks for an appointment, unless it's an urgent need. I was recently worried about something, but urgent? Only seeing the doctor would be able to say if it was something serious, and with a two week wait, time could have been crucial. Another thing, when I phoned to make an appointment, it was like they were doing me a favour! No patience, and very matter of fact. I remember in the old days, if one was feeling 'poorly', the doctor would visit at home, it was all part of the service. Now, it has to be an emergency. Progress...
I tend to find that the phone line is always engaged, so usually have to actually go to the surgery to make an appointment. Once I'm there I do mostly find the staff fairly good, bearing in mind some of the idiots they have to deal with.
Ah yes, same here. The laughable thing is that there's some TV screens with information about services offered and general stuff. One of the messages conveys the average length of time it takes to answer a call.....9 seconds
My local surgery has 8 Doctors and they have all decided that they are now going to work a 3 day wk one wk and a 4 day wk the next, alternating . Not only that but.... They are keeping their salaries at the same level as now, therefore effectively giving themselves a 30 % pay increase. The nursing staff, receptionists etc were all furious but what can they do about it.
Yep, I did hear about him. Makes you kind of wonder what is actually going on in the NHS. I'm probably walking a tightrope here, but do we actually train doctors, nurses etc. anymore? If we do, where the hell do they go, and why the hell do we have to rely on foreigners, who often dont speak English very well, and tend to make out its us that are stupid when we dont understand, them.
Right, so who gets the UK trained ones? We pay for their education. We get the third world trained ones.
In Bedfordshire I could wait up to 2 weeks for an appointment. I told them that I could be either dead or cured by then. In Northampton though, it's a same day appointment if you phone early enough. It's engaged but you just have to keep ringing (so these days I go there when they open). They open 5, 1/2 days a week, and an on site pharmacy , that handles my repeat prescriptions beautifully . When I was in hospital, we had a language problem with a Chinese doctor. The nurse seemed more frustrated than I did, and went to get a consultant instead . She was Indian (the consultant, not the nurse . The nurse was Spanish or Portugese ).
