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This is an honest review, not an attempt to be...

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"This is an honest review, not an attempt to be..."

About: Manchester Road Surgery

I have been a patient at MRS for many years. There are many positives. The longer running reception staff are very nice and helpful. The newer staff members rarely smile at you when you are stood at the desk. If they are doing something you don’t get a courteous “I’ll be with you shortly” nor do you get any indication they have registered that you are there (e.g. a quick bit of eye contact).

I have a number of repeat medications. About 60% of the times I have requested an amendment (usually when something has been done wrong like numbers of tablets not lasting the right amount of time, or on 2 occasions the wrong medication was added and another time a medication was deleted for some reason). Most of the mistakes have happened during the appointment with the GP, but messages added on the online system often appear to be ignored meaning you have to go to the surgery again to rectify the problem. I really think the GPs need to pay more attention to detail when reviewing repeat medications, and the admin side needs some training to improve efficiency. This will save the patients, and themselves, a lot of time. You would be best seeing a training GP for medication reviews as they seem to be more on the ball when it comes to IT.

The appointment system makes it very hard for full time workers to get an appointment in the afternoon. In the past I had an urgent need for a GP appointment on the day. I called in the morning explaining I was in a meeting from 2-4pm which I could not avoid so could not ring at 3pm. I was told there was an urgent appointment available at 5pm, but “you can’t have it unless you ring at 3pm”. After going over the reason again and again for needing the appointment, to which the receptionist agreed needed to be dealt with, I kept being told you can only have the free appointment if you ring at 3pm. There was no apology or empathy. I had to give up and seek help at the walk in centre. This was totally inappropriate as my problem needed continuity of my regular GPs and hence I didn’t properly get sorted and was told I had to see my own GP.

The longer running GPs are nice with good communication skills. They could improve on ‘thinking outside the box’ when it comes to more complex patients. They seem to use some sort of IT tool that tells them what to do, and this does not seem to help with me. I have spoken to other peoples experiences of GPs at different surgeries and they seem to get a much better service overall. One of the newer GPs comes across as rude and dismissive and really needs to do some training on examination skills.

Overall, I tend to feel upset and frustrated the majority of the times I have had contact with this surgery. Lots of my time has been wasted due to repeat medication problems. I really think some customer service training is needed at the front desk. I hope it improves. Thank you for reading.

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Responses

Response from Manchester Road Surgery 5 years ago
Manchester Road Surgery

Submitted on 03/10/2018 at 16:21
Published on nhs.uk at 17:05

You have raised a number of issues in your feedback for the surgery and we will try to deal with them individually.

You mention newer staff members not smiling or acknowledging you at the desk. The newest member of our reception team started in 2014 and the longest serving member in 2002. If you would like to contact the practice manager directly to name the member of staff you have concerns about please do so and she will discuss this with the individual staff member.

All staff undergo a rolling programme of training including customer service skills and regular meetings to reflect on feedback.

Prescriptions – our admin team and GP’s deal with on average 60 prescriptions per day and upwards of 150 items on these prescriptions. It sounds as if you order your prescriptions on line and thank you for doing it in this way as it is the safest way to order your prescriptions . Any message you add to your request are brought to the GP’s attention so they can deal with any queries or changes you have noted. Please accept our apologies if you don’t think this happened in your case.

As you seem to be experiencing ongoing problems with your medication it may be worth you booking a double appointment with your regular GP to give you both time to resolve any issues with your medication.

Appointments – We acknowledge that trying to get an urgent appointment and in particular with your regular GP can at times be difficult. In the scenario you describe as you had explained that you couldn’t call at 3pm and as you had told the receptionist why you need to see a GP you could have been offered a call back by a GP at the surgery. You do not say that this was offered as an option for you, so please accept our apologies and for the fact that you were felt with unsympathetically.

IT tool and GP’s ‘thinking outside of the box’ – We presume that you have experienced GP’s at the surgery using National guidance e.g NICE or templates on the computer system for some patient encounters. These are very useful as they ensure that GP’s are following current guidelines and it prompts them to ask questions that are appropriate to the condition so that nothing is missed. They are by no means used for every encounter and please be reassured that the GP even though using this tool will be using their clinical skill and judgment to assess your condition.

We are sorry that you feel that you have not received the best service at Manchester Road surgery. You mention that you have spoken to other people who seem to get a better service elsewhere. We think it is worth mentioning in response that we were listed as ninth best GP surgery in Sheffield in the latest GP survey so thankfully your experience does not seem to reflect that of the majority of our patients.

As part of our usual process we receive any feedback either positive or negative we will discuss your comments with the whole of the team and attempt to address the issues you have raised.

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