Surgery

Can't you demand a face to face appointment with him then? Surely he must actually see some patients.If you are not happy with this please complain to the practice manager of the surgery or the PCT for your area.

Hi

It is extremely unprofessional and poor practice to diagnose and prescribe over the phone without a consultation. You cannot diagnose over the phone, if GP's start doing this then the A & E departments which are overstretched as it is will be full of misdiagnosed patients and will become bottlenecked.

The body is a complex peice of equipment and with so much that can go wrong with it, it needs a hands on approach, with some patients who trivialise their symptoms this is seriously dangerous and leaves the GP open to malpractice.

I for one wouldn't be on a doctors list who diagnosed over the phone

Juliexx

I believe you are entitled to a face-to-face appointment with a Dr within the practice (not necessarily YOUR GP) within 72 hours of requesting one, according to the patient's charter; though I could be wrong and this could be simply a government target. I've pressed my own surgery over it more than once, and on each occassion they've caved and booked me in.

I think you're being treated appallingly.

If you ring up and request an appointment, you must be offered one.

However, a lot of problems can be addressed over the phone and telephone consultations are fairly common. Bottom line is if you ring up for an appointment in no way should you be refused. Dont get into the symptoms, problems or whatever, simply ask for an appointment or a double appointment if you have more than one problem to discuss. If you don't get one for whatever reason, complain to the practice manager.

As for home visits, yes Doctors are reluctant to do these for anyone who is able to get to the surgery due to demand. And this seems fair enough imo.

Our GP practice does do phone consults but it is the opposite way round ,you have to request a phone consult otherwise you get a face to face.

Our surgery offloads a lot of routine stuff onto nurses and nurse prescribers. This ensures that when you NEED a doctor one is readily available. They will do telephone consults but mainly for repeat prescriptions or discussions of ongoing problems for which they have already seen you, for anything else they will insist you come in. In emergencies you will be seen on the spot by a triage nurse who will then fetch a doctor immediately when required. This also ensures that the doctors have time to make home visits

So it just goes to show how differently they organise these things in different places.

One plus point, the less often you visit the surgery the less likely you are to get cross-contaminated! Maybe your doctors are afraid they will catch something if they have to see ill people.