"GP Appointment"

I booked an appointment for my wife on 14.06.2023 with the doctor. I called at 8:00am, and the receptionist asked the first question, what is the emergency? I explained in detail then she said, this is not an emergency, you need to go to hospital or call 999. I said my wife has side effects with the use of medicine which the doctor prescribed last week and now day by day her condition is becoming worse and immediately we have stopped taking these tablets and need urgent advice. On my request, she put this information in the system and then booked an e-call appointment and said the doctor will give you a call between 9:00am to 6:00pm.

For this appointment, as usual, again we received a call at 6:00pm from the receptionist just as an information that the doctor has left the surgery due to her personal urgent work and she will give us a call on coming Friday. Here one thing appears, personal activities of the doctor are most important as compared to the patient problem, why not arrange a substitute solution before leaving the surgery. At that stage, obviously I could not do anything and left this matter till Friday with assurance that the doctor must give us a call once they will look in the medical history of my wife that she is an angina, blood pressure and diabetic patient. As a result, on Friday the doctor completely ignored us and did not call while we were waiting from morning till 6:00pm.

I would like to ask, what is meant by Emergency in medical terms? What I could understand in terms of this Surgery, emergency means, you survive or die without medical assistance, doctors don’t care. I think once the emergency call is booked, doctor should treat the patient at priority or as early as possible but in most the time, doctor called at the end of the day around 6:00pm just as a formality and in rare cases they advised to come to the surgery within 20 minutes which some time put us in trouble.

If we go to the hospital in an emergency which we visited last month, they said why didn't you visit your surgery first? We clearly told them; we can’t get an appointment over the phone or at the reception. I don’t understand, we can’t book appointments with the surgery, can’t go to the hospital, where will the patients go finally???

As far as I can understand, there is a lack of management in this surgery and would suggest, please change your incompetent Indian receptionist, she doesn't know anything and also recommend doctors should go for their refresher courses after 6 months.