GPs will cut the number of appointments they offer each day, under plans to protest over pay.
Family doctors are voting on whether to take part in national “collective action” with work-to-rule measures set to be introduced from next week.
Who’s been able to see one anyway?
How will they be able to warn us about the dangers of climate change? Presumably it will have to be by phone or email as these are now the de facto methods of dealing with the less important mere medical matters.
One obvious solution would be for the government to provide essential funding for a new category of non-medical practice nurses to deal with climate change and DEI issues. I believe the requisite university degree courses have been in place for several years.
Rather like this story, the only real response is ‘Sure, go on then!’.
TBF to my GP, I get numerous offers for ‘health checks’ of one sort or another from the surgery.
I decline them on the basis that there is every chance they will find something wrong and prescribe either ‘lifestyle changes’ or drugs, neither of which i’m interested in at the moment.
As I’ve said before we’re more than happy with our GPs, but that’s not the point. As they used to say in the ’70s when there was lots of this about:
Don’t you mean inaction?
If working to the rules means that the service is disrupted which fool drew up or agreed to those rules?
When giving out Covid jabs, our local health centre worked with amazing efficiency from dawn until late into the night to process patients. I’m sure that Streeting will get them to adopt this as standard practice, as soon as he can load up the lorries with money again.
When giving out Covid jabs, our local health centre worked with amazing efficiency from dawn until late into the night to process patients. I’m sure that Streeting will get them to adopt this as standard practice, as soon as he can load up the lorries with money again.
Standard Labour practice. A very good friend was a practice manger for a large GP practice in North London. When Labour was elected and Blair set about setting payments directly tied to various targets ep BP measurements, he set the whole practice up to deliver those targets and some. In one year the practice MD or whatever he was got a bonus of £600k and the most junior GP over £100k.
They offered him a bonus of £60 as a thank you so he resigned in disgust.
Sir Kneel’s ludicrous stories may have impressed some of the thoroughly indoctrinated, but not that many out of the 100,000,000 the NHS employs. Since I feel Blair is back I think the doctors have got it made, I think he’ll have the same effect as last time, thousands will retire rather than keep working to screw up their pension. Unless Sir Kneel decides to tell his financial expert Chancellor (har,har) to give them all his special type of pension pot…
In fairness, it’s mostly about how you game the system. When I need an appointment, I don’t go to the doctors appointment bullshit because that leads to the usual “I can fit you in next month” kind of mentality.
What I do is go to the NHS 111 website (albeit http://www.nhs24.scot since I’m in Scotland) and through their pretty useless diagnostic tools. That inevitably leads to “Go see your GP”.
When you call them up, tell them “I was referred by NHS 111” and you get a call back quite quickly and follow up appointments within hours to days instead of weeks.
No idea why this is, but it does work.
Family doctors are voting on whether to take part in national “collective action”
As opposed to their normal collective inaction.
My recent experience has been varied. Two GPs at my practice have been good at taking the initiative to phone me, quiz me about symptoms, order tests, arrange hospital appointments, and so on.
But most oddly, for the first time ever I had a useful response from 111. I had gone on hols taking a packet of the wrong medicine. 111 issued a new prescription for the correct drug and the nearby chemists (Boots) did a fine job of making the stuff available to me at speed.
On the other hand my local World Famous Teaching Hospital still makes it as difficult as possible for disabled patients to get from the car or taxi they arrive in to the relevant clinic, and ditto for the return trip. I have found myself relying on the kindness of taxi-drivers, a security man, and – once, God help me – on the husband of another patient who was so horrified at my treatment by the hospital that he got a wheelchair and pushed me to the car himself. A hero indeed; but why are we paying zillions of pounds a year for a “service” that gives less help than a random stranger?
And the medical and nursing staff all know: three times in the last few years clinical staff have said “stuff it”, put me in a wheelchair, and wheeled me to the exit themselves because the bloody hospital’s portering service had abandoned me.
Oh yeah, and recently it took three separate visits, crossing the city each time, to get a simple “bloods” done for INR testing. Envy of the world!
Clearing the way for AI to replace them. Lockdowns and videovisits were the trial run.
Dm – I know what you mean. I’ve been to hospitals in Scotland and the “free” parking is very bad for patients as locals use the hospital as a free park and ride so you end up walking a quarter of a mile to the front door.
I had a fun conversation with the GP receptionist yesterday.
Me, after waiting half an hour in a telephone queue: “Hello, can you please help? I’m a psychiatric patient with just one pill left and the pharmacy says you need to issue a repeat prescription”.
GP receptionist: “FOOLISH MORTAL, HOW DARE YOU DISTURB MY MALTESERS FEAST?!?”
So anyway, I said she might see me on the news.
Anyone who saw the Max Headroom origin story will probably remember the bit that showed a patient having a consultation with his doctor via a zoom-style link, in which he dropped his trousers in front of the camera so as to show the boil on his backside. This was presented as a symptom of how awful things were in this dystopic world. Oh how we laughed.
I have no difficulties with my GP. If I have a health problem, I fill in their online form and they phone or SMS me the same day to offer an appointment. If I need a repeat prescription it takes a few seconds to order one on the NHS app.
“Family Doctor”? Ah, so that’s why my experience is so crap. I’m not a family, I’m a single person. I gota text message saying my annual blood pressure test was due, please book an appointment. I went online and the earliest was mid-September.
Bollocks to all this targetting of hard-working families. What about us non-familes working just enough to get along or not at all? If they’re families they don’t need any external support, they have their family. If they’re hard working, they don’t need any external support, their hard work supports them.
Jgh – tbf, “family doctor” sounds a lot more sympathetic than “crap business that doesn’t care if you live or die”.
@jgh: buying your own blood pressure meter and cuff might well be economic. You can measure it as often as you like and avoid any transport cost of getting to the GP.
Dearieme
Heartily concur.
I’d go further and recommend a device which can keep a long term record for you.
I use to use a Qardio, but it has no means of showing what it measures, relying on a Bluetooth-connected phone to do that. But their Bluetooth was crap. And the original model used batteries, which died quickly
So I junked the pile o’merde and settled on a Withings BPM+, which can use wifi, is rechargeable, and uses tiny LEDs to show what it’s measured even if you have no phone. Recommended, though only had it a few months so far.
Now all I have to do is control my BP 🙂
(actually, it’s much better now thanks to change in meds…)
buying your own blood pressure meter and cuff might well be economic. You can measure it as often as you like and avoid any transport cost of getting to the GP.
Agree and been doing it for some time. We now have an app the gathers and analyses the data based on a target set by our GP, it also sends the results to the GP.
https://www.omron-healthcare.co.uk/viso
I meant to add that we also order repeat prescriptions online or through the NHS app and they are delivered to the local Post Office.
I thought they were independent contractors, who on earth negotiated a contract that lets them get stroppy and ‘work to rule’?
dearie: I have my own blood pressure monitor, but I have to “check in” once a year to coordinate the calibration.
Our GP surgery delivered online appointments scheduling and repeat prescriptions about 2016.
Unfortunately the whole COVID bollocks threw a spanner in the works and online appointments scheduling has been cancelled ever since, but the repeat prescriptions still work. Not a technical problem so much as staff failing at co-ordinating schedules I think.
Someone at the GP’s surgery needs a kick up the bum.