Don't be fooled

[minestrone]

What does IPSE have to do with anything, quite apart from the fact I'm not. Some of you guys really do need to get over yourselves a little. Your paranoia is getting very wearing.



It has been; do your own reading. The GPs' new contracts meant they stopped providing care out of office hours and shoved it off to the ineffective non-emergency call centre-based service, so people went to A&E instead where they felt they were at least dealing with professionals and not Capita-sourced amateurs. That has been corrected to some extent now - by no means completely - but the behaviour is ingrained and people still prefer A&E to GPs for the most trivial of complaints.

Add to that the difficulty of hiring GPs and support staff in the primary care arena and a growing demand that they struggle to service and you can (or at least should) understand the interrelationship.

The problems with the NHS are across the board, the GPS being one trigger. However it is one that could be cured and resources moved to where they are needed. TO do that you have to get the local primary care trusts (small, self-governing, largely run by volunteers and non-clinical managers) and the regional Hospital Trusts (large, professional, overstaffed and commercially driven) to work together. Good luck with that one.

I'll make time to respond to the overall ****wiitery of this post later but I do specifically note your opinion that letting untrained people and folk who are just generally 'up for it' be more involved in the NHS as positive.

:suicide

[malvolio]

I'll make time to respond to the overall ****wiitery of this post later but I do specifically note your opinion that letting untrained people and folk who are just generally 'up for it' be more involved in the NHS as positive.

:suicide

TL;DR. Whatever...

[minestrone]

Ill respond to the specifics later, but first off I just noted that you claimed initially the problem was a contract and the problem could be solved by down skilling a workforce.

It is an unorthodox response coming from someone in IPSE.

[mudskipper]

It is an unorthodox response coming from someone in IPSE.

An IPSE member. FTFY

Exactly the same as probably 50%+ of other regular CUK posters.

The only barrier to IPSE membership is the willingness to cough up your £154.73. As such, members have a diverse range of opinions, views, knowledge, experience, and even feckwittery (FTAOD, I'm not saying the latter applies here - I haven't read the argument!) But to take any members view, however well or ill informed as coming from IPSE is no different to assuming the bloke on the road who calls you a **** is speaking for the RAC.

However, I'm not getting into an IPSE discussion, as I specifically do not post here as "someone in IPSE", but as a bicycle riding piscine.

[SueEllen]

If it takes me five days to get an appointment with my GP (and that's any GP in the practice, not my actual assigned GP) and I have an upset stomach, I'll go to A&E where I will be treated in a few hours. The reduction in GP hours means primary care is badly compromised so it falls back on Emergency care. The bulk of A&E cases are not critical, to the point where hospitals are starting to employ GPs in A&E departments to act as triage points.

A&Es are for acute, critical cases, not little Johnny's cut finger. If you can't call out your doctor, or get an appointment in less than one working day, or aren't registered with a GP or are just too damned ignorant to understand what A&Es are there to do, then you have a crisis.

So if you have made GPs unwilling to provide 24x7 primary care by paying them not to provide it...

I was told by my ex-crap practice and my current practice one that you don't have an assigned GP anymore. So even if you joined the practice with one you don't have one unless you are elderly.

The better practices tell you to only see a particular GP again if they are dealing with a complicated illness then make sure the receptionists book you in when they are scheduled again.

Also if you need an urgent appointment then you need to phone up on the day for an appointment. This is an NHS England thing which was brought in with the Labour government.

In my last crap practice that didn't work as the receptionist, of which there was a high turnover, didn't answer the phone. So your best bet was to line up at 7.30am to get an appointment. The appointment would then end up being for one of the school run times.

With my current practice I can often wing it so I can go to either of the two out of three surgeries that are walking distance from me.

Also lots of practices now employ nurses and nurse practitioners to do the hard work. In many cases this is fine but if the nurse/nurse practitioner finds something they then have to refer you to a GP to do the follow up. This has happened to me twice the first serious and the second not so serious.

[Mordac]

If it takes me five days to get an appointment with my GP (and that's any GP in the practice, not my actual assigned GP)

5 days? Try 3-4 weeks!

[xoggoth]

The Labour deal allowed GPs to opt out of evening and weekend work with a small pay cut that they could make up in other ways. A very old link here:

BBC NEWS | Health | BMA team 'stunned by GP contract'

[SueEllen]

5 days? Try 3-4 weeks!

Then clearly you aren't an emergency.

If you were you would make an on the day appointment.

If they think you are an emergency after doing tests, and if they are doing their job properly and not hiding them like my ex-practice, they will phone you to make appointments in the necessary timeframe.

[SueEllen]

The Labour deal allowed GPs to opt out of evening and weekend work with a small pay cut that they could make up in other ways. A very old link here:

BBC NEWS | Health | BMA team 'stunned by GP contract'

Do you blame them?

I remember having a conversation with one of the two of my childhood GPs as a teenager.

He explained how they did a night on-call and then had to have one or two clinics the next day. In between the clinics they had to do home visits.

At that time doctors drove themselves around, which is obviously not safe. This lead to doctors having higher car insurance premiums. Now it's only hospital doctors who have the higher premiums.

[BigRed]

Do you blame them?

I remember having a conversation with one of the two of my childhood GPs as a teenager.

He explained how they did a night on-call and then had to have one or two clinics the next day. In between the clinics they had to do home visits.

At that time doctors drove themselves around, which is obviously not safe. This lead to doctors having higher car insurance premiums. Now it's only hospital doctors who have the higher premiums.

Sounds like IT on-call, only easier and better paid