"Rude GP on Coventry GP out-of-hours service"

I used the phone number for the Coventry GP our of hours service as it turned out that I had forgotten an important medication. I was greeted by the initial assessment over the phone, told them my concern and was told a GP would ring within the next hour.

At approximately 10 minutes later I received a phone call from the GP. However, I could not understand him at all, which I feel was because he was speaking too quickly and because of the language used. I was extremely apologetic but tried to provide the information required, but I simply could not understand him. In my opinion he then started to get aggressive with me and began shouting down the phone, which I feel didn't help as he was still talking to quickly and it only felt demeaning and insulting to me. Especially as I still needed to ask him to repeat himself regarding either where I was staying or where I was registered, I also explained again that I couldn't understand him.

He then clearly lost his patience and just asked me to come down to the walk in centre. He also blamed me for the fact I couldn't understand him due to ny phone connection in a very accusing manner. Although I couldn't detect a problem on my end of the call, I don't think a bad line could have caused him to sound extremely rude, abrupt and unhelpful on my phone. I explained I disliked his manner and wished to make a complaint, and again he shouted at me to go to the walk in clinic.

As I was already in a worried state as I may have missed a dose and could miss a weeks worth as well, the way he came across did nothing but stress and upset me, as well as completely discourage me from attending the walk in clinic.

I subsequently made a call in order to find out how to make a complaint to the service, and the woman dealt with that very kindly and explained to put it writing. I would hope you can play back the recording of the call from the gp and make your own mind up. To be honest I did not hear whether it was the GP.

Although I understand you have a complaints procedure, and I will be putting my complaint in writing when I get back home at the end of the week, I would appreciate it if you could provide a decent response to this site too, as I'm sure other users would find your response helpful or interesting.

I have written this on my phone on the evening of this incident, so I apologise if there are any errors.