"Disorganised mess"

Every single doctor I have seen so far has been asking me whether or not I am a new patient, even though I have been a patient for over a year. This alone should have been a first warning sign for what was to come:

I had pretty high blood pressure for the past couple of days. I was asked to show up in person to verify my home readings, no big issue at all. I am a very heavy guy (like 30+ stones heavy), so normal blood pressure cuffs usually will just rip straight off my arm. Not a big deal though, as usually most GPs have a larger cuff for obese people like me and so does HESA. I know, because they measured my blood pressure before. Except this time, despite searching for it for about 15 minutes, nobody could find it, sending me home again without being able to get my checkup. Okay, stuff like that can happen.

A few hours later a doctor calls me. She insists I need medication immediately, but feels uncomfortable prescribing me the medication I took in the past without a blood and urine test first. Meanwhile she insists that I pick up a temporary prescription from a different pharmacy than my usual first. Okay, great: I take the twenty minute walk during a pandemic to pick up medication that is seemingly critical enough that it is of utmost importance to go there right now at like 8 PM. The pharmacist looks at me confused when I show up, then spends about 15 minutes while sick people cough around me without masks, to then tell me that the surgery did issue a prescription but then immediately revoked it. So they can't dispense the medication to me.

To make matters worse: In order to send the prescription, they simply revoked my choice of my nominated pharmacy to switch to the other one, without even asking or telling me. I understand if that was necessary to send it to a pharmacy that had open that late during the day, but at the very least let me know so I can change it back. I wouldn't have noticed if I didn't check in the NHS app whether or not the acute prescription was listed (which it was with an undefined date).

Overall: While the people are friendly and I am sure are doing their best, the level of disorganization is nothing but jaw-dropping and doesn't instil much confidence.