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"Trying to get a face to face appointment"

About: Mendip Vale Medical Practice

(as a service user),

My partner went to the Pudding Pie Lane surgery to attempt to get me a face to face appointment with my preferred GP.  I recently had a very unhelpful appointment with a nurse at Yatton and I have new symptoms that need a face to face with an experienced GP. Specifically the GP who my Oncologist reports to via letter after a consult. My partner was told that my GP  is busy with other "practice things" and doesn't do surgeries anymore. He was given a paper eConsult form for me to fill in. 

The form is as useless on paper as it is online. Irrelevant questions with not enough space to write even the minimum of relevant information.

My new symptoms are potentially serious and I have an ongoing issue that needs to be addressed. I am not going to accept being fobbed off to see a nurse again. 

I need to see one GP for continuity of care and for me to be able to build trust. My issues are complex, related and certainly cannot be dealt with in the "ten minutes" one is grudgingly allowed and reminded of constantly.

 There are no other GP practices in my catchment area that do not belong to this practice group that I can sign up with. This practice group is now a monopoly in my area. I have been with this practice group since the late 1980s. Since it started buying up other practices, then adopted eConsult, I have found it obstructive, unresponsive and uncaring. 

Communications from the practice are very poor also. 

I am immunocompromised, have cancer and am now left in need of help, with new potentially serious symptoms and nowhere to get help from a compassionate, experienced GP.

Telling me to ring 111 or fill out eConsult and wait for a call back, or to go to A&E is both unhelpful and insulting when a face to face consult with a GP I can trust will do perfectly.

What has gone well? 

Nothing.

Making a formal complaint and/or speaking to a practice manager will not solve my needs at all. The eConsult system has put paid to even the lowest level of service from this huge group practice.

I have pretty much given up hope.

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