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Sub-standard medical & health care

Posted By North London Resident

"Sub-standard medical & health care"

About: Langstone Way Surgery

(as a service user),

I have been a previously loyal and extremely grateful patient at Langstone Way Surgery for nearly twenty years, but the service has deteriorated so much so that I am now looking to change practice.

My last (telephone, of course) appointment, was supposed to be a follow-up one, having had a cursory conversation last week (after months of waiting), with yet another, different GP - who had obviously still not read the background of my request.

I felt that the doctor treated me like just another “administrative issue” they had to tick off - informing me that I was one of thirty or forty patients they see each day and that they were  squeezing me in before their rounds.

In the middle of trying to articulate my health worries, I was interrupted to say that someone  had now been on the 'phone for eleven minutes and so we would have to book another appointment next week.

Why? Essentially as far as I could understand, to regurgitate to yet another (possibly different) GP.

I feel this is sub-standard medical & health care  from a crop of possibly new doctors / locums at this practice who I find to be dismissive, patronising, with extremely poor and impersonal bedside manner.

Very sad

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Responses

Response from Langstone Way Surgery nearly 2 years ago
Langstone Way Surgery

Submitted on 14/06/2022 at 19:19
Published on nhs.uk at 19:20

Thank you for your comments. I am sorry that you are unhappy with your experience. Unfortunately, what the doctor told you is correct and they cannot really spend more than ten minutes with each patient, which does only allow time enough to deal with one problem at a time. This was true prior to the pandemic when patients were routinely seen at face to face appointments for all issues. The pandemic meant that normal practices had to change to limit the opportunity for Covid to spread, so now, only those patients who are deemed to require a face to face appointment for a problem that cannot be handled another way are invited to attend in person for an appointment. With the dwindling number of healthcare professionals and a growing number of patients, I am afraid that this is likely to remain the model going forward and clinicians cannot spend long periods with any one patient, as this then means they will have no time to spend with all the other patients requiring assistance.

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