I'm looking for tips on identifying a GP practice that will support me managing my diabetes. My current practice require me to see the Diabetes specialist GP for absolutely everything. That GP is not interested in working as a partnership to manage my diabetes, I am to do exactly as told and any questions I have are dismissed. I took in an article from a major and mainstream medical journal about a possible link between my diabetes and a co-existing condition I have and asked whether it was something that needed to be thought about, his response was to fold it in half, put it in the back of my file, unread, and just say 'No'. I can't bring myself to go to the surgery any more, even for HbA1cs. I need to find a new GP but I don't want to end up in the same position again.
I am a health professional myself and know that Dr Google can cause unnecessary confusion and distress but would never treat a patient the way I have been treated on the rare occasions I have asked to discuss things found on the web.
How would folk recommend finding a GP open to partnership working?
I think there is always a danger of going from the frying pan to the fire; one man's ideal being another's nightmare. Many, many people on here struggle to actually access a doctor for diabetes management; many practices preferring to utilise practise nurses, or a nurse who may have an interest in diabetes. From a directional perspective, those nurses are likely to be more constrained in terms of their empowerment, and abilities to change treatment regimes, or dietary rationale. So, that is always something to consider.
Have you considered manning an appointment with the doctor concerned, outside of any specific diabetic review or issues, to discuss matters in general? I don't mean a social interaction, by any means. Then going to the meeting with an agenda for discussion? What sort of specifics are you struggling with? Most of us are told to eat up the carbs, whereas many of us rationalise, and prove by testing, that doesn't work for us, so adopt a different woof working. Whilst my Nurse was absolutely against my testing, as I ended up self-funding, there was absolutely nothing she could to to stop me pricking my fingers, at my own expense, in the privacy of m own home. Nor could she then argue against the results achieved, when lab tests returned significantly improved blood sciences, and the scales recorded the trimming up she could see for herself. At that point, she had little else to say, aside from, carry on doing what you're doing. She didn't want to go into any detail on what I had done, as I think my reiterating my rejecting of the major carbs would have been a challenge she couldn't credibly make.
Good luck with it all, but just worth remembering the grass isn't always greener in the other field (and any other clichés you care to summon up).
