Vaccines to be compulsory for frontline NHS staff.

[Workingman]

Crohn's disease is bad, it's an illness, it is out there. Sufferers live with it, and cope. The coronavirus vaccine has no effect on it at all as it is not a viral condition. It, the condition, is being used, as are many others, for not having the vaccine. It mystifies me.

[miasmum]

I am a tad mystified about your comment of Put her on the desk and let the recptionist do the consultations. In many surgeries that's what they do anyway.

If you mean the receptionist asking what is wrong when you request a call, yes they do, because they are instructed to and they have been trained to be care navigators.

I have noticed in many surgeries they have actually stopped advertising for GP Receptionists now and instead advertise for Call Handlers/Care Navigators a much better description, because I guess the words "Abuse Taker" wouldn't get much interest

[Workingman]

Nice defence, but from the patient's perspective the 'care navigators' are not, and never will be, the medical professionals they want to address in person.

Ask me relevant questions, by all means, but please do not pretend to be qualified to diagnose my illness over the phone, as appears to be the modern way of doing things. If you see yourselves as "abuse takers" it might be time to ask yourselves why that might be the case.

If it is that I am ill I would like a professional opinion from a qualified person, and yes it can often be done over the phone, but the 'care navigator' is not that person. It's not hard to understand.

[cromwell]

I have noticed in many surgeries they have actually stopped advertising for GP Receptionists now and instead advertise for Call Handlers/Care Navigators a much better description, because I guess the words "Abuse Taker" wouldn't get much interest

That's sad MM. I can believe there is a lot of abuse. People who are ill or in pain (or even their relatives) can be upset and short tempered when they phone; and that's before the permanently entitled who are never away from the surgery start (like one of my wife's uncles. He fell out of bed the other day and phoned for an ambulance - and it turned up, too).

The population is growing and growing but our infrastructure (roads, schools, hospitals, police, etc) isn't.
In our village the surgery isn't much bigger than it was in the 1970's but this village itself is three times bigger. Lots of demand, not much supply.
The GP's round here stopping face to face appointment though has caused trouble. People who really do need to see a doctor have ended up in A&E and had to wait hours. One bloke in the village felt ill, the doctor wouldn't see him and he ended up being taken to A&E by relatives where they told him he had a blood clot; he wasn't pleased.

The NHS is going to take years to fix.

[Suff]

I have noticed in many surgeries they have actually stopped advertising for GP Receptionists now and instead advertise for Call Handlers/Care Navigators a much better description, because I guess the words "Abuse Taker" wouldn't get much interest

The NHS is going to take years to fix.

The NHS is never going to be fixed. It has become the third rail of UK politics. Touch it and die. It will limp on consuming ever more money until people, themselves, purchase an alternative and that alternative will flourish as money flows into it.

I got an appointment with my GP, over the phone, not a happy experience. He was whinging that he was not "in control of my health" because I was trying to get a repeat prescription from my French doctor because I had run out whilst he was on holiday and was in the UK and didn't want to go nearly 3 weeks without the blood thinners. When he started bleating about how he could not treat me if someone else was diagnosing me he got it both barrels. The NHS AND the private consultant REFUSED, three times, to carry out the procedure which would diagnose me and the French were totally horrified at this. Eventually he gave in and gave me a one month prescription.

I didn't quite get the words Mal Practise out but they were in the background.

In the last 3 weeks I've finally realised that I was going through the onset of a heart attack, for the second time, in the middle of my stress perfusion MRI. They didn't even notice.

How do you fix that?

[miasmum]

What I would say to all of you is spend one day just one day in a GP surgery and watch and listen. The abuse the receptionists get is horrendous. And if the fact they deserve this is how you feel then that’s a sad sad indictment of the world we live in.

When one phone call was played back last week one patient used the f word 9 times. And as he could hear her getting upset he said stop snivelling you useless F******* c***

I’m not a receptionist thank the Lord but as a Med sec I have had letters shoved in my face, I get it too on a lesser scale.

As I’m currently off work with work related stress which breaks my heart this is my final word on the subject

I wish you a nice weekend xx

Except I’d just say my stress is due to management not the patients

[Suff]

There is never any excuse for that kind of abuse MM. I was perfectly polite to the doctor, but then I am eloquent enough to get my point over without being abusive. But I do understand people's frustration and anger. My Sil is currently suing the NHS for malpractise where the NHS bothered to do the barium meal for her dead daughter; but didn't bother to read the results. With the predictable end result. Yet she has never been other than polite to the staff.

Some people have no standards. I suffered years of hell in the Army where I was abused by professionals who had me under their command 7 days a week 320 days a year. I wound up with Eczema, a compressed spine due to muscle collapse and a twitch in my right eye which took 4 years to fix.

I have sympathy with people who have stress in their work. None for those who generate the stress.

[TheOstrich]

There is never any excuse for that kind of abuse MM.

Absolutely this, and I am sure that everyone on this forum would agree.

[Workingman]

Except I’d just say my stress is due to management not the patients.

Bingo! So it's not us plebs causing the problems, is it? it's the NHS management wonks causing them. Whoda thunk it.

Well us patients, that's who, we know, but we have no influence, no say. So things wil never change.

It needs sorting out for all our sakes, and PDQ, but it won't be.

[miasmum]

I have one manager, so no its not management its one person who due to the way he handled the death of our wonderful, gorgeous, amazing 45 year old Nurse Practitioner last month has completely pushed me over the edge.

I am not using this as point scoring exercise. I am broken, I am devastated, I am constantly in tears and I am going to bed