Written by Frederica
Stop Press 14/5/21: The NHS on Thursday night performed a climbdown over plans to use online and telephone “screening” for GP appointments and announced that every patient would now have the right to see their doctor face-to-face.
It doesn’t seem all that long ago that doctors were in-place to serve the community. Now, like politicians, it appears that the community is there to serve the caprice of the doctors!
I remember going to the doctor’s surgery, taking a number in the waiting room and eventually you were called in to see the GP. You had to be there by a certain time in the morning to be seen on the day but generally most people were able to do that. If you were ill you were ill! Appointments were bookable for anti-natal; follow-ups for tests or regular checks-ups etc. But basically, if it was an emergency, you were seen. Doctors also carried out home-visits for those who were too frail to get to the surgery or too sick to leave home.
At the time I mention above, it was also possible to call the surgery number in the night if you had a telephone (or could get to a neighbour who had one) for an emergency; speak directly to the doctor (or his long suffering wife!) and if he deemed it necessary he would turn out and visit.
Your doctor knew all there was to know about you, your life and your history. Consequently, they also knew how to probe beneath the surface if they felt there was more to the matter than you had chosen to disclose! Thus, diagnoses were much more holistic than they are today and it was much more likely that the treatment you were offered was properly effective and quickly administered. There were still waiting lists for consultant appointments and operations did not happen quickly even then (unless there was an emergency). But generally, the system seemed to work to most people’s reasonable satisfaction.
Yes, doctors were probably overworked and very likely underpaid but they never appeared to be poverty stricken. They were respected in the communities that they served. They did learn how to complain about their lot eventually, through the voice of their ‘union’ and thanks to the ‘good offices’ of Gordon Brown, their lot was improved an hundred-fold, seemingly overnight.
From that day on they haven’t looked back!
Subsequent ‘Health Secretaries-of-State’ (each one less empathetic or ‘clued up’ on how to run a health system than the last), have meddled and twiddled with the knobs and levers of the ‘sacred NHS’. Not one of them has caused any appreciable improvement to an already creaking system. NHS ‘management’ has run rings around most of them. Consequently the NHS has continued to become the almost unreachable monolith that it represents today.
Little by little it has become harder and harder to see the GP at the convenience of the patient. First they began to work four day weeks. Then the system changed so that emergency appointments had to be made by 10.30am each morning. There were only a limited number of appointments available so if you were really sick it was necessary to call the surgery as soon as it opened. Thus, the telephone lines were ‘red-hot’ from 8.30am as people constantly had to re-dial in the hope of getting through.
The receptionists must have felt unduly pressured by that system, or maybe they were fed up with the ‘frustrations’ of the desperate potential patients. So then, they decided that you had to actually queue outside from the time of surgery opening. Thus, winter or summer, rain or shine, the queue built up outside the door from a very early hour. You still weren’t guaranteed to get a consultation and I once saw an elderly person who had dragged themselves on to public transport and queued outside in inclement weather, only to be disappointed and sent away again.
The Covid debacle must have been like all their birthdays come at once. The outside queues still carried on but distancing and face masks were mandatory and the reception desk was closed in favour of a half-open window at which you had to stand 6ft back and shout your business for all to hear! For the lucky few who made it inside the hallowed portals (where the once crowded waiting room was now empty, chairs stacked up and shrouded away from view!) there was the mandatory hand-gel-scrub and the ‘escorted’ distanced walk to the consulting room where heavily masked and plastic shrouded clinicians deigned to discuss your case.
Even face-to-face appointments became and still are limited. The surgery preference returned to ‘constant-redial’ telephone call attempts and “tell your troubles to our receptionists” after 4-minute-long call-steering messages – receptionists who have now been ‘trained-up’ by the doctors to ask for all your symptoms so they can decide whether you merit a telephone consultation or not! It’s not as though all the ‘newly-trained-in-medicine’ receptionists have also acquired ‘empathy’. Most have enthusiastically embraced the ‘dragon-at-the-gate’, ‘jobsworth’ mentality in their zeal to protect the doctors from those nuisance patients.
Even hospital consultants have joyfully embraced the ‘no-patients-here’ principle. Telephone consultations are the order of the day. How can it be possible to make a genuine assessment of any person’s ailment or requirement for specialist treatment down a telephone line?
Still, we all thought … when the Covid ‘crisis’ goes away all this will be like a bad dream. How wrong we were! Now the new ‘aristocracy’ feels so secure behind its ivory tower walls; so cushioned against the depredations of the ‘great-unwashed’ who cause such disruption to their cosy ordered way of life that they see no reason to return to the old ‘status quo’ at all.
Thus, we are to be kept at a distance for all time to come. The opportunity to ‘tell your troubles’ to a properly qualified physician or specialist is now rapidly diminishing into the far distance. I confidently foresee the imminent return of the local ‘wise-woman’ (witch to you and me) or the herbalist whose fragrant premises, redolent of strong smelling plants and root extracts, making a return to a corner shop near you any time soon.
Photo by Tim Green aka atoach 
“when the Covid ‘crisis’ goes away all this will be like a bad dream.”
It wont go away. It will go on and on with green blobbery added. Vernon Coleman predicts for example that the mask mandates will be eased soon perhaps but that they’ll be back early autumn, with the screw tightened even further, as TPTB conveniently wheel out the next mutant.
Indeed Mary. From what I read this morning Boris is already preparing to backtrack. Now they have control they will not give it up easily.
I wish there was a Herbalist near me. I can think of one or two ‘silly shops’ where I’d prefer a herbalist.
Another point, You just CAN NOT buy a sensible quantity of full strength aspirin nowadays. I don’t know about paracetamol as it does not agree with me.
So some where along the line something has gone very wrong with our health service and self help service.
From time to time I have come across a GP who had some insight into exactly what I do suffer from. That is he/she saw beyond the fancy labels. But yes actually seeing that GP got more and more difficult.
Basically all the GPs are nowadays are drug pushers for the pharmaceutical industries.
I agree Pauline. I came to that conclusion when I found that they were being paid £25 per every patient they diagnosed with Asthma!!!!!! I too wish there was a herbalist near us. We used to have one in the town and it was very much missed when he shut up shop and retired. I am told that herbal remedies can be found online so maybe it’s worth a look. Perhaps you can feed in your symptoms or known condition and get some suggested tincture.
Frederica ; What you say is right, and what I’m about to report is I understand extremely unusual, and I’ve been very lucky l: but I have to say my local surgery served me extremely well over last week or two. I contacted them through their contact section on their website, they got me to see the GP (also a specialist) who got me a hospital appointment , at the speed of greased lightning.
Yes indeed to what is written in this article. Many doctors (I feel sure it’s ‘many’) want to help and are upset and frustrated by the system as it currently stands. The NHS is there to serve us not for us to save them. Heavens, it’s the fifth largest employer in the world with so vast an income from all of us that probably no one knows what it actually is and which always wants more which politicians are only too keen to put into effect and thus the biureaucracy grows and grows and we are left as described above. It needs a complete re-evaluation and restructuring but who will ever be brave enough to do it?
Hugh some years ago a guy called Gerry Robinson did a series of programmes called “Can Gerry Robinson save the NHS?” He came up with some really sensible conclusions and suggestions but nothing ever came of it (of course not!!!! The Management would have had a lot of their empire – and budget monies -shaved away!). I can see that it might be possible to see at lest episode 2 online (google search).
G Broon did get one thing right.
kept us out of the Euro , if only to spite Blair
I tried to register on-line. Access codes invalid two hours after I walked back from the Splurgery.
Is my labour MP interested in the NHS failing s??
The word ‘perspicacious’ comes to mind while reading this, Frederica. As a child, I can remember Dr Stephens, an Irish GP who served in our locality, visiting me and family members at home when we couldn’t visit his surgery. Mind you, the NHS was in its infancy in those days. I shall never know if it was because HE did THAT, that I’m still around to be able to remember it?
Michael D An Irish Dr delivered my daughter in hospital (1969). As he stitched me up he sang Irish ditties! Later, we moved house and the GP practice we registered with had him as our GP. There followed many years of friendly and understanding dialogue. My last long-standing GP (retired from practice about ten years ago) was similarly empathetic. He had a sense of humour and could take banter as well as dish it out! I used to take him eggs from our hens and honey from our bees when I went for my ‘annual MOT’ as we called it! His like have gone forever I fear!
Remember the ’50’s’? I do, as do many more people. If you felt ‘ILL’ you walked down to the surgery, report in to the receptionist, sat in the queue and waited, you were seen by Gp who probably gave you a ‘prescription’ which you then took to your local chemist, (NOT BOOTS,) and by the time you arrived home, you were able to begin taking your prescribed medication. No fuss, no computers, no mobiles, no doctors throwing their rattles out of their prams, just plain COMMON SENSE on all fronts.
Later, whilst serving in the Fire Service, my crew were called to an RTA/Person Trapped (Road Traffic Accident),
on arriving, the person trapped was my eldest son, I, we, all did what we were there for and released him and. a Doctor attended and was very good, he came with me in the ambulance to take my son to hospital.
What on earth has all that got to do with the subject in question, you may ask, well, I’ll tell you.
That Doctor came from the local RAF Station, he was a Medical Officer to RAF and hearing the call of emergency, he attended and performed admirably. Soon after this, he left the RAF, having served as ‘Field Emergency Medic’ in the Falklands crisis.
This Doctor, having left the RAF, became a Doctor in the local surgery that my family were registered with and thereafter, a most fulfilling professional friendship ensued, at many fires, road accidents and many other incidents
as well as, being my Doctor. Professional, Reliable, to the point, honest and a friend.
I, being ex Army and he, being ex RAF had this ‘Rapport’ we both understood each other!
They don’t make em like Bob Dorling any more, they could but, I fear they will not. Dr’s today are that far ahead in pay/self importance/social that to speak honestly to them causes such “hurt” for them that you are
“Tagged” for all time.
Graham You.like myself. experienced the ‘best of the breed’. Today’s ‘precious’ and egotistical issue have no idea how the real World operated when sanity and common sense prevailed. They have become far distanced from the people they are contracted to serve. Gone forever are the days of mutual respect and rapport!
PS what a terrible shock that must have been for you to find your eldest son as the casualty in the RTA!
This is a profession..Another word to describe them is ‘their union’ or another is ‘their ‘monopoly’ Either of these is more applicable, but do not describe the rise to priesthood and arcane knowledge , or their attraction to rulers. In neither of these pictures do customers matter.
I feel concern for those members of professions who still feel responsible to their patients, And like doing good instead of feeding the machine.
Brown: Was there anything he did that turned out to be to our benefit? I guess the list could be written on a postage stamp.
You’re right Jack…. or even a pin head! He was so desperate to be Prime Minister and a World ‘Statesman’ (as they all are). But he merely proved that like so many of them all, he was a ‘bear of very little brain’ and not an ounce of true leadership or patriotism! One might suppose that politicians are now cloned from the same sample. They all think alike and perform worse with each incarnation!