"Dismal, impersonal service"

I am writing to express my disappointment with the standard of care of service I received from your surgery this week.

I have been feeling dreadful for more than a week and finally succumbed to completing one of your e-consult forms early on Tuesday morning.

Having not heard anything by mid-afternoon on Wednesday, I called the surgery and was told that someone was supposed to have called me but, inexplicably, the call hadn’t been made.

Thankfully, the person on the phone organised a phone consultation within an hour and the doctor to whom I spoke then asked me to come to your Jersey Farm surgery asap.

Within 25 minutes I was at the surgery but when I arrived, the two ladies on reception seemed totally baffled that I was there and asked me to take a seat.

I then spent 75 minutes sitting in the waiting area, coughing all over the place and feeling dreadful. One of the receptionists had to come to see me to check my name which drove me over the edge as I had already been sitting there for so long.

Once I saw the doctor, who was very curteous and apologetic for the service I had received, I was astonished that she didn’t prescribe antibiotics and when I got home my wife (who’s Italian) was speechless at the training of English doctors who generally do as little as they possibly can to help patients recover.

I run a business and have been absent from work for ten days, the doctor seemed totally oblivious to the real life needs of patients. It shakes my belief in both your surgery and the wider care given in the UK.

Lastly, your online e-consult system is an insult to patients. It’s impersonal, not user friendly and (in this case) totally ineffective.

I appreciate you’re all very busy and chronically underfunded but the idea that if a patient feels ill, the first thing he/she needs to do is go online and fill in a form is absurd and cruel.

I’m trying to be constructive in offering this feedback in the (vain) hope that it’ll bring about an improvement in standards both in interaction with patients and in the clinical care provided.