"Extremely poor lady GP availability"

Called the surgery on 24th Jan to check availability for a lady doctor.

Was advised that a lady doctor was on the following morning or Tuesday afternoon.

There were no pre-bookable appointments due to the high demand to see a lady GP and therefore was told to ring back at 8am the following day for an appointment that morning.

I arranged to work from home as I was told the earliest appointment would be 9.45am due to the GP travelling from Manchester!

I called at 8 and after several attempts got through, arranged an appointment and when I specified with lady GP I was told she had cancelled the evening before.

Therefore there were only mail GP's available!

Desperate, I took the appointment with the male GP.

I did not feel comfortable, nothing personal to the GP, but I just didn't and felt even more uncomfortable when he beckoned the young girl on reception to come chaperon whilst he examined me.

I was highly embarrassed and I am sure the young girl would rather not have been there either.

I also mentioned to the GP about another issue but he said lets deal with one thing at a time and prescribed me a tube of cream for the condition he had not examined.

I therefore booked another appointment for the following Thursday with a lady GP, 11.55am Thursday 1st February.

Again I sought approval to work from home as travelling to and from my GP/work would be an hour each way.

(The surgery does not offer early morning or late evening appointments for people who work).

The afternoon before my appointment I received a telephone call from a receptionist at the surgery, I thought he was going to tell me the lady GP had cancelled again, but to my relief no, it was just a change of time due to the doctor cancelling the morning surgery and doing afternoon instead.

My appointment was re-arranged for 2pm.

I arrived at the surgery at 1.50pm and arrived myself only to see a mans name as the doctor I was seeing.

I went to the receptionist and queried this with her.

She told me that the lady GP had cancelled and I was now with the male doctor.

I expressed that this was not acceptable as I really needed to see a lady GP and asked why I was not informed that she had cancelled.

She could not answer this as she was not the person who had called me the day before.

I declined to see a doctor at all and left the building feeling very upset.

When it is personal health problems it takes a lot for some of us to go to see the GP, to pluck up the courage on two occasions for this to happen has left me with no faith in this surgery any more.

We have no resident lady doctor which is really poor.

They are trying to recruit but in the meantime how many people are not attending the doctors and leaving health issues unattended to.