Went in on Friday. I asked if I could discuss another issue and was (politely) told that because it’s a ten minute appointment that I’d have to come back again to discuss that issue.
Which seemed…well both shit and a recipe for absolute disaster given how difficult it is for most people to see their GP even once.
So, was she right or should I be more brazen next time?
You’re right that it’s frustrating, but it’s a no win situation (I’m a GP myself, btw).
- There aren’t enough GPs, there just aren’t, so time is scarce. All the surgeries are overloaded.
- each issue NEEDS time. People feel very confident of what they need sometimes, but that isn’t how medicine works. We need to assess, get the details, to give a right diagnosis and treatment
- every extra little thing, borrowed minute, carries forward. An extra 10 minutes at every other appointment turns into hours by the end of the day - unacceptable delays for patients and the staff.
- there is so much added paperwork for each of these things. Most of us finish our clinic at 4-5 and then still have a couple of hours of paperwork.
- most of us are so very burnt out at this point, and appointments becoming more complicated, demands getting higher, pushes us further towards giving up.
It isn’t the patient’s fault, but it is the reality. People fall through the cracks, important things gets missed, we know this and hate it too. We call it moral injury, the phenomenon of building pain because we can’t actually meet people’s needs or fully do what is right.
I hope the reply is clear that this isn’t push back. We wish we had more time with each patient. We wish we didn’t need to reign it in, but we’re already stretched too thin. We know it’s frustrating. We’re frustrated too
