I still do as many face to face appointments as I did five years ago
Far more in fact.
GP appointment demand has gone up over 20% just in the last three years though and the administrative burden has increased far more than that. We cover 14500 patients, up a thousand from a couple of years ago. Staff sickness has also massively increased with six of my colleagues off ill over the past couple of months, two off on maternity leave and one on long term sick due to burnout. We're trying to book as much locum cover as we can but availability is limited.
I started my on call at 8 this morning and finished seeing patients at 2.15pm going late into my afternoon surgery which started at 2pm and finishing at about half seven before finally going home to eat something and then start on my blood results and letters.
Higher demand and fewer doctors means waits for a routine appointment are now five weeks. The reason the receptionists seem grudging is they literally have no appointments left to book patients into. It's the same at my wife's practice, it's the same at my friend's practices, we haven't been able to get appointments for my children with our registered GP.
I know it's just as shit for other public services, the country is fucked.
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2 Can Chunder Word to your mums, I came to prod bums, Fri 26 May 2023, 0:14,
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Is increasing NI the answer to get more cash in, or are there just not enough medical staff about?
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Turtle Power & Knuckles, Fri 26 May 2023, 0:28,
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Voting Labour is the answer. We can't afford the cost of Conservatism, and running the NHS into the ground is the tory plan.
Removing tory incompetence and tory corruption will free up billions of pounds per year (this is not even a joke). We need to pay doctors and nurses at least the same that Australia and NZ are offering, and increase recruitment too.
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brb homonecrobatrachophile, Fri 26 May 2023, 0:42,
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Run it all into the ground, while propping it up with huge contracts for their private sector mates?
Surely not!
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Turtle Power & Knuckles, Fri 26 May 2023, 9:39,
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they will need some proper redistributive fiscal policies mind you
And they will need to sell them properly. An axe needs to be taken to the Murdoch empire basically. On day one. He's ailing now so it's the right time
(, Fri 26 May 2023, 10:25, Share, Reply)
National Insurance doesn't pay for the NHS but yes increasing funding is part of the answer.
Staff retention can improved by making staff feel valued rather than getting the media to make them scapegoats for underresourced services not being able to cope with demand, addressing pension and other problems that mean it makes more financial sense for senior clinicians to retire in their 50s than keep working and stop imposing unnecessary workloads and targets to achieve short term political goals.
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2 Can Chunder Word to your mums, I came to prod bums, Fri 26 May 2023, 12:03,
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Maybe you can answer this for me:
Why have I never encountered a competent GP receptionist?
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jonbob loves you, Fri 26 May 2023, 2:09,
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They do exist
Our GP's receptionists are on the whole very good, when there are enough of them to be able to answer the phone. I don't know if it's better recruitment or training.
On the other hand, when my wife went to Hastings to stay with family while waiting to have our baby, the GP receptionists behaved like their job was to prevent you from seeing a doctor.
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tarka_dall Like normal dall, only a bit more spicy, Fri 26 May 2023, 6:46,
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I think very few people appreciate how difficult and stressful their job is.
Most people assume it's as simple as 'answer the phone, book the appointment'.
Most of the patients ringing in will already be feeling frustrated at having to wait in a queue and often having to make several attempts to contact the surgery for what might seem like a fairly straightforward request. The receptionists are constantly having to apologise for a situation that isn't their fault and trying to manage patient's expectations whilst knowing that often they won't be able to provide a satisfactory resolution eg they either tell the patient that they can't have an appointment that day or they have to explain to an irate clinician why they agreed to give a patient an emergency slot for something that clearly wasn't an emergency.
They have to remember all the various protocols and services and which clinical staff can deal with particular problems, have to make decisions about how urgent things are without having clinical training, are subjected to constant abuse and get paid less than if they worked on a supermarket till.
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2 Can Chunder Word to your mums, I came to prod bums, Fri 26 May 2023, 7:35,
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I really should have reported the two I encountered some years back.
As a patient in the waiting room, they were loudly discussing patient medical details, with names.
(, Fri 26 May 2023, 15:19, Share, Reply)