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Report transcript in: Woman talks about continuity and call back system with GP
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Woman talks about continuity and call back system with GP
Please Report the Errrors?
thank you so much for your time.
Can you tell me a little bit about what it's been
like to access GP services over the past few months?
It's a bit challenging, accessing the GP
like, for instance, with the appointment
you need to call on the day by eight o'clock,
and I find out that most of the time when I've called, I never get to speak to anybody.
You just put on hold until 20 minutes later,
and when you finally get through to the receptionist,
you're told that all the appointments for the day is gone
and then you'll be put on a cancellation list.
If anyone cancels, then
you get a call back from the GP.
But most of the time you never get a call back and
then you'll have to ring the next day until you're finally lucky.
And the last time I called
to get for an appointment for an ongoing issue
with my tummy,
the same thing happened.
I got to speak to the receptionist 20 minutes after being on hold, and then I was told
there was no appointment for the for that day, but they put me on a cancellation list.
So I did get a call back, but from a paramedic,
I don't know if the paramedic is attached to the GP surgery
or not.
So I spoke to the paramedic and explained what my
symptoms was and told him I'd been in contact with
a doctor previously about the same issue.
So he said they will put me on the
the drug I've been on.
I can't remember what it's called now,
and I was gonna get a call back from the GP.
But I never got a call back from the GP. So I had to ring the receptionist back
after a few days.
And then she said she was gonna put me on the doctor's list of people to call,
but that wasn't going to be until
the week after,
So they gave me a date, and that was like a week after my contact with the
receptionist.
So on that day
I did get a call from the GP, and then we went through what has been going on.
So
they put me on the same drug,
Lazo.
So I'm to take it for four weeks,
and if the pain in my tummy persists, then it's gonna send me to.
It's gonna send a referral to the hospital for for the for the check. So
I'm just a week and a half into the prescription now.
So fingers crossed. Everything is gonna be resolved at the end of the four weeks.
So I think I don't know if
the pandemic has got to do with it,
but it's difficult now for people trying to get a doctor's appointment.
And when you do get a an appointment, it's
always over the phone.
So I think
it's not,
I suppose, in the situation
we just deal with
whatever we've got. But I think a face to face appointment is better because that we
they cannot actually examine you because you can't really get your point across
over the phone
like being examined whilst you're you're in the room
because I remember sometimes back in
I think that should be. In March,
I was having pain in my left foot,
and then
I called the GP surgery,
and then I was told I need to fill an online consultation form, which I did,
and they said the doctor is gonna get back in 48 hours,
and I didn't hear back. I was in pain all through the weekend.
And I'm somebody that I don't really like
checking out my symptoms online because sometimes you get things that are scary,
and then
you're anxious all through the week before you get an actual call from the GP.
So I tried as much as possible to avoid that.
But I was in so much pain all through the weekend, I couldn't go out.
I couldn't take the kids to school.
The last day of school, my husband had to do the school run and he was walking. So
but because I couldn't walk, it was too painful to walk and my legs were swollen.
So I was in pain off through the weekend, just taking painkillers. But luckily,
because I'd had a bad, bad experience with, um ibuprofen.
So I didn't take ibuprofen,
but I didn't get to speak to a doctor. So in hindsight now, it was
a good thing that I didn't take ibuprofen for, because it would have
exacerbated my symptoms. What was going on?
So the doctor rang me back on the Monday and then when I explained my symptoms,
was just told me
to drop everything I was doing and head straight to the hospital.
So when I got there,
I was examined. I think I was there for about three hours before I got seen.
So when they check my leg and I had to go for
is it a
or something? So they find out that
I had a clot just above my knee. It was
behind my leg before, but it had travelled over the weekend because I wasn't seen.
It had travelled up, and it was just above
my left knee. So I was placed. I was put on a course of, um
which I had to take for six months. So I've just come off it now
and then in the hospital, I was told that
I shouldn't take any, um
anti-inflammatory which ibuprofen was,
but because the pain was I was tempted to take
the ibuprofen before I got sent to the hospital.
But if not because of the bad experience I had,
I would have taken it. And only God knows
what would have happened, because later I was told I'm not supposed to take it,
so I just think
more resources need to be put
into the NHS and G GP surgery because they're quite straight, and I think
they're missing out a lot of a lot of ailments getting undiagnosed. And
by the time they see people,
it's kind of getting late. And for some people, it might just be too late to do
to do anything about it
and seeing people face to face. Because whilst I was on the,
uh the
I had a pain in my shoulder and then I rang the GP surgery up, and then the
one of the doctors called me,
and then she spoke to me and she she she was gonna give me, um,
the ibuprofen.
So I had to remind her that I've been told not to take ibuprofen.
So I thought before they ring people up,
they would have gone through my notes and see that I'm not supposed to.
But if it's not somebody that is away,
or if I hadn't been told at my hospital appointment that
I'm not supposed to take ibuprofen while on the block,
I would have just gone for that.
So I had to be the one to remind her, which I don't think should be the case.
So
that's been my experience.
Thank you very much.
Um, when you So you've spoken about,
um, speaking to GPS on the phone?
Is it the same GP that you speak to are different ones?
Um, when I spoke to the lady, that's a
different one. But
when I've had the stomach pain, I think I've I've been speaking to the same doctor.
Thank you.
And, um, I just wanted to ask you you mentioned about changes.
Maybe because of the pandemic. So before the pandemic,
where you are able to book apartments in advance, or has it always been that system?
It's always been the system before, before the pandemic.
You have to call by eight PM on the day.
But it's actually difficult to get
an appointment when you call on the day, because
because before the pandemic, people do go there by eight PM to queue up.
So the people that are already there, they get the preference.
So by the time you finally get through to somebody on the phone,
me tell you no, there's no appointment.
So the times I've got got an appointment before the pandemic is either
I've had to wake up myself before work to go there or
my husband had to go there to get an appointment for me.
And then while I do the school run and just show up for my appointment. So
I don't really think it's an effective system
because except if you've got nothing to do
because you never get through immediately, you call. You're on hold for.
And for some people that I know that use the same GP surgery,
it's been the same experience they've had.
I think, I suppose, sometimes for Children.
If you're calling to make an appointment for Children, they do try to
to work out something, even if it's something later in the day.
They do try to make, uh, a room if it's for Children.
But for adults, you tend to wait quite a while before you get an appointment.
Thank you for that. Is there anything else that you want to find?
Um, I'll just say I think that they're doing a good job or they could do better,
Thank you very much.
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