General Chat

Just an idea to ease the load on a & e departments

Our local GP's are paid handsomely

Open GP surgery's seven days a week

They won't work the full seven days as locum GP's can alternate hours.

Do something about the resources that get spent on dealing with drunks would help.

trouble with a & e is people turning up with things that could be dealt with by a gp
they get seen eventually instead of being told to go away and see their gp

Exactly

Our local surgery has four resident GP's, never are they all there at the same time, usually two & a locum, they do four hours in the morning or alternate shifts, so probably 20 - 25 hours a week, locums do home visits IF you can get one,
GP's salary £125k a year.

My local medical centre is split into 3 surgeries.

Not sure if 7 or 8 doctors just in the one I am registered with and I think at least 6 each in the other two.

My local hospital does not have an A&E dept, that is over 20 miles away, but it does have a minor injuries unit which is usually staffed by nurses with a doctor in attendance.

In some areas up to 30% of A&E visits are reckoned to be unnecessary and could be handled in general practice, or even told to go home and take an asprin.

The current problem hasn't happened overnight. It goes back some ten years when the Blair government introduced new contracts for GP's, effectively increasing their income to well over £100K - in many case more than a 30% increase in income. Most GP's now earn double or more than a surgeon or hospital consultant.

The theory was that the extra income would be ploughed back into improving local practice health care and productivity - how wrong they were - the opposite effect happened. We had a GP who regularly arrived 20 or 30 minutes after his first appointment was booked.

Even back in 2008 the NAO was saying that despite the influx of money to GP's signs of real productivity were still to be seen in many practices as much of the money had merely gone to the practice partners pockets.

A big wakeup call is needed by the sound of it.

In defense of GP's. in the wake of the Harry Shipman affair they now have to leave evidence based paper trails of treatments and have regular peer reviews which takes time out of surgery.

They have targets to reach in patient satisfaction and have to conduct surveys.

I don't think there ever will be a balance achieved as long as patients keep attending A & E and GP surgeries unnecessarily and were GP surgeries are concerned failing to attend appointments. I will never understand why people cannot pick up a phone and cancel an appointment which is no longer needed.

I agree the problem is not being able to get hold of a GP when you are suffering acute symptoms, someone going to A&E because they have a chest infection that just needs a course of antibiotics would seem a waste of hospital time but if you cannot get to see your GP for two days who can blame them?

GP's spend too much time bean counting these days!

The other problem is the drunks but that's a social problem that needs fixing it's not something the hospital's can change.

Personally I avoid A&E like the plague I need to be desperate to go there last time was slicing the top of my thumb with a stanley knife, I was lucky we had a minor injuries unit left when our A&E was closed, how embarrasing when they asked my occupation and it was Handyman ;-) wry smiles all round!

One major cause is they close an emergency unit at say three local hospitals and move the service to a main centre but they don't have four times the staff there!
some "expert" works out they just need a only couple of extra bodies at the new centre.

If someone has been given a GP appointment in 3 days time, they 'might' decide they can't wait and go to A&E.

A relative is a Senior Nurse in a Hertfordshire A&E department - she despairs when parents take in a child with a minor illness. "Don't use their common sense". However, as she doesn't have children, she doesn't realise how parents can worry about the smallest sniffle.

Then there are people who haven't been able to register with a GP - the Practice may have a full list, or they may not have an NHS number. They know that A&E will treat them with (almost) no questions asked.

Well i can't believe it, i had to go for a blood test at our local surgery this morning, it's done in a separate building from the surgery but a notice displayed on the surgery doors said CLOSED TODAY FOR GP TRAINING.any emergencies go to a & e, i live in quit a large villiage & if you don't have a car a & e is a nightmare to get to.

here in Cardiff we have an "out of hours" service to see a GP and that seems to work well - have used it once for myself and once took a friend - each time we got excellent service - I was suffering from excrutiating back pain and was diagnosed wth a uriine infection unbeknown to myself - my friend also was in agony and she was diagnosed spot on with polymyalgia - a difficult thing to spot apparently - had to be confirmed with a blood test, but that GP was spot on as I said

With regard to drunks, the situation will only get worse whilst this government has double standards towards alcohol consumption

They have come down hard on cigarettes, but alcohol is promoted everywhere you look - posters, TV, supermarkets - that has to stop and the government should apply the same hard line with alcohol as it does with tobacco

Ask a worker in A & E who they would prefer to deal with - a smoker or a drunk - I rest my case

We have no a annd e in our town and we have 32,000 people in the town our doctors are open 7am til 9pm and still the smaall minor injuries unit at our hospital is full of those who cba to go to the gp in opening hours

The nearest large a and e is 25 miles away and is full of drunks and families whom think its a family day out!!! no one in our town would venturee there on thursdays fridayys or saturdays eeven though they cant provide some caancer treatments or ANY heart treatments at all ..............even when 999 is called people often ask to be taken to another hospital just across the boarder......but the ambulance cant do this !!!

what a mess