two week wait

That's good compared to mine, I tried to make an appointment to see my dr and her first available 1 was on the 17 April.!! You can hardly get in my Drs I needed a prescription update there were no appointments so it was ring on the day so I did that every day for a week, tried Tuesday this week surgery opens at 8.30 so I rang then, I rang 36 times continually engaged when I got through at 8.42 the 36th time all appointments had gone. So I had to then go to the emergency sit and wait. It's just a bloody nightmare!!!

I rang 114 times till got trough lol

Please check out the following as many Practices are changing the ways they work:

Does your GP have online bookings.. If so register at the Practice and then go home and sign up. You can then get better access to appointments with GP's. All GP's should be offering this by April this year. You can then sort out prescriptions online if you want to;

Do your Gp's have Nurse Practitioners? If they do they can diagnose and prescribe just as much as a GP;

If you need just a review on medication -ask if this can be done by a phone call appointment;

Is your GP now offering skype appointments;

Join the PPG or set one up with your Practice-all GP's have to have PPG's by April this year. By joining you can talk about concerns for telephone lines and having to ring back.. Our Practice from discussions with PPG's have made so many improvements its unbelievable.

If the Practice has a PPG contact the Chairperson with suggestions of improvements needed.... Do not make it a personal complaint as this still has to be handled by the Practice Manager. However they are there to listen to suggestions of how they could improve things positively for patients.

For a prescription review you should not need to see a GP. Check with your reception whether this can be done over the phone on a call back appointment....

caretaker said:

I do try to do most things over the phone and i haven't seen the doctor in years i don't even no bis name. they keep leaving .if i can see a nurse that's all i need.
i will check out the online booking it sound good idea but i feel that older people without a computer might miss out. all the appointments could be snapped up by the mobile phone generation.

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They only release xx% of appts to online bookings and currently across the UK the GP's are not meeting their targets of people using online bookings. So really you don't have to worry about taking appts from non online persons.. You will actually be freeing up an appt for someone that isn't online....

donnellysdogs said:

For a prescription review you should not need to see a GP. Check with your reception whether this can be done over the phone on a call back appointment....

Click to expand...

very funny. I waited 3 weeks to see the nurse practioner who then recommended that I go on statins but I must see a GP. She offered to book me an appointment on her system,but it went wrong. After 20 minutes she came back with an appointment with a new doctor to the practice and not my regular for 18 days time, my own was 4 weeks. Went there and she did not put me on statins, just increased my metformins. Why do we bother. This after they messed in November and then again in December leaving me without any tablets for a week. At most practices the blood test can be done at the same time as the flu jab, but not here - time wasting!

Because it is so hard to get an appointment with a GP the advice given go to an A&E department. No wonder hospitals are suffering, its just been given out over the radio that our local hospital dealt with an extra 1000 last month.

Our GP's won't even consider working for £135 an hour on bank hol Saturday to help out a&e!!!
Mind you another localpractice opens Saturdays and out of 20 appts booked by patients only 8 turned up!!
Patients wasting apprs are just as bad as GO's that won't get out of bed for £135 an hour!!

I thought my mum last year had lost her marbles when she went for a stroll to GP at 9.30 on a Saturday night!! He practice was open!!!

Beggars belief that some can do it and others can't!