GP surgery review: james-wigg-practice
Title: Sorry seems to be the hardest word
Rating: 0 out of 5
Visited: January 2023
Like all GPs this surgery refused to see patients all through 2 years of pandemic - but we are almost at the 3 yrs mark and it is still virtually impossible to get seen. I feel like a pawn in a political game.  
The appointment systems change daily .Communication is so poor I have lost trust things are ever done or safe ,when this is the relationship you are meant to trust the most.  
They have a telephone only system where a clinician which often means not a doctor, decides if you are allowed to see a GP or have to be put to random multiple telephone appointments where you get more and more ill as time goes on. All of which will end up in you having to see a GP in the end anyway - it seems like such a poor management of scarce time. Or, as in my family's case 999 take to A&E.  
They don't listen, all this here was said to them over a long period because they are always under stress. But patients are more under stress I think.  
For some unfathomable reason a communications and media team runs their complaints system, Not one of them are medically qualified so no lessons ever get learnt . The (extremely rude) member of staff who rang us didn't understand a single basic medical term we were using let alone have a grasp of the serious consequences of what goes wrong. They are the same team who have told people on feedback sites to email them when there is no point as they wont understand why what is written here is so clinically poor. Such a very poor management system where there seems to be no clinical person looking at the medical consequences of when things go wrong.  
2 different egs from our family , both of which have been said by others with similar concerns here or on Google a good while back .  
We have very young children. There is no priority system in the telephone triage for under 5's and others have said this and the GPs didn't do anything so yet again no lessons learnt. So you call, hold on in a queue of over 30 patients for up to an hour during which time they could and should have had an option for under 5's because young children's illness is often very unstable. Then reception tell you no appts and to do the same the next day and so it goes on and on until an emergency is reached. At which point they say this is now too urgent for us call 999. They've done this when there is a shortage of children's antibiotics, shortage of rehydration sachets they tell us to use, ambulance and nurses strikes.  
This has happened 3 times in the last year. My children are now terrified of any medical setting after being admitted through and to local A&E's subjected to painful injections and tests. If we ask to see a GP then the GP should see us.  
As another example, a family member has very very poor mental health and when that is the case her ability to self care in all respects goes down. She has a psychotic condition which excludes her from all the self referral routes.She is dependent on medication but this is hard to take and needs GP support and has very bad physical side effects that have to be monitored closely through blood tests .Plus she has serious physical health problems and like others with these conditions needs to be seen. But in her case because she is too scared of the phone and doesn't even own one she hasn't been able to be seen at all. This is what happens when GPs decide everyone can be cared for over the phone or by video when no they can't.  
Some of this would be easier to manage emotionally and make sense of if anyone there ever said sorry. But they never do, no matter what has gone wrong. It makes our family feel like our lives don't matter . We also think this is a discriminatory system for very vulnerable and if the GPs really wanted to change they could.  
Only simple conditions are manageable by phone. If we ask to see a GP it is because we know we need to see a GP. Believe me it is not a 'want'.