"The system is broken"

I suffer from depression. I am menopausal. Recently my menopausal symptoms have been unbearable. I decided to contact the GP about HRT as I could feel that my physical and mental health was declining.

Easier said than done!

Unfortunately the process at the surgery I'm with is completely unworkable and does not put the patient at the centre. 

The poor state of the management of the practice is not unknown. people have written to the practice, to NHS Lanarkshire, to their MP, their MSP, to the Health Secretary. There is a Patient Group that meets with the practice to raise concerns. Nothing changes.

At the moment you cannot move practice, you cannot always go to A&E... in this day and age is it too much to ask for a working system?

As a larger group owns the practice, they don’t seem to be answerable to anyone, least of all their patients. This is not patient care! Worth having a wee look at the patient satisfaction scores.

A week after first trying to get an appointment, I am still trying. In that same period a friend’s daughter has ended up in hospital due to not being seen by a GP and just being prescribed meds over the phone. I know of other serious consequences that have occurred after the GP prescribed over the phone for months without actually seeing another patient and examining. Is this patient care?

This is not a system that works for the patient. 😞 And yes there are issues countrywide but I don’t know of anyone who is experiencing as poor a service as this. Blimey, you only need to live in the next town/village to be able to see a doctor without a huge palaver!

I am not blaming the public facing staff here, as they are only working within a system that they have been given (although from a story I read the story the other day about an incident near the surgery and the attitude of staff of the desk at the time, you could be forgiven for thinking that all sense of humanity had left the building).

The issue lies fairly and squarely with the owners and management, who appear to have forgotten why they got into medicine in the first place.

Something needs to change before something worse happens. Where do we go from here?