Sorry to hear of your experiences......I'm in West Dorset and can assure you it's no better here..The standards at my GP (been with them since 1964) have dropped to a worrying low quality. Since my near fatal bout of Sepsis in January I've needed a lot of help. Once they refused me a phone appointment even though the pain was driving me towards suicidal thoughts. On another occasion I was shouted at by the duty doctor for trying to get a face to face to help my Wife and I deal with the terrible symptoms. Seems to be take these antibiotics and go away now. Don't feel as if I matter any more.
My local practice has dropped to level below shocking. Impossible to get an appointment to physically see a doctor. Many still working from home. All enquiries to see a a GP have to be made through an app which are then screened to decide importance. Average time to see a GP is 5 weeks. Phoning the surgery generally means an hour in a queue before being answered by a receptionist who thinks they are a doctor and ask intrusive questions before making an appointment. Again a face to face appointment is generally 5 weeks or a phone consultation within 7 days. All this has done has encouraged more people to go to A&E to see a doctor leading to waiting times of up to 6 hours if you're lucky. All through the pandemic GP's were impossible to see yet hospital staff of all levels were working incredibly long hours. GP's are a joke, surgeries are understaffed and over subscribed as local areas increase in population with increasing numbers of new properties being built. Can't see it ever improving unless you choose to go private. Perhaps thats the plan.
The standards at my GP (been with them since 1964) have dropped to a worrying low quality. Since my near fatal bout of Sepsis in January I've needed a lot of help. Once they refused me a phone appointment even though the pain was driving me towards suicidal thoughts. On another occasion I was shouted at by the duty doctor for trying to get a face to face to help my Wife and I deal with the terrible symptoms. Seems to be take these antibiotics and go away now. Don't feel as if I matter any more.
Thanks, it is interesting to hear that perspective and that it is intentional. If that could be communicated to the public more formally so that we understand, that would prevent a lot of frustration I think.I will put my head above the parapet, I'm a GP Practice Manager and have been for just over 10 years, COVID has shown a lot of GP Practices how they can now deliver a service using telephone triage and remote video options.
I started at my new practice this time last year, changed the appointments system to include more face to face appointments with telephone triage as the first contact. Our patients (in Govan) have embraced the changes and whilst they get annoyed sometimes, generally understand the new way of working. General Practice will never go back to the pre-COVID way of working.