"Triage system"

Since the new triage system has been introduced, the phone is constantly engaged, so it is virtually impossible to get through to the surgery. It is not possible to book a non urgent appointment with a doctor, only a telephone appointment. How can an accurate diagnosis be made over the phone. it is putting the onus on the patient to tell the doctor what is wrong, not the other way round. If the doctor decides after a telephone consultation that the patient does need to be seen, that telephone call has been a waste of valuable time when the doctor could have been seeing another patient. The telephone consultations can be made at any time of day, meaning a patient has to wait by the telephone all day, and then on two occasions recently the call has been at 8pm. I am deaf, so a telephone consultation is not always very satisfactory.