Appropriate demand on my GP?

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The majority of British GPs are overpaid morons: they got into med school because they were born of rich and privileged families, not because they are particularly intelligent. Most of them are obnoxious people and they never smile even although they earn £100,000 a year or more. And they know jack about mental health and psychiatry.

If you look up your ailments on the NHS Direct website, the chances are that it'll recommend you discuss them with your GP. I tend to take that as authorization to do just that.

I know what you mean about feeling guilty for "wasting" your doctor's time. I used to feel like that. My reasoning was that the NHS was clearly struggling, and I didn't like the idea of taking up their precious resources for my apparently non-urgent problems - surely I could be pushing somebody in greater need further down in the queue, and perhaps be indirectly responsible for somebody's death?

But I decided that I don't want to live my life according to such lofty ethical standards. If the NHS is under-resourced, that's a problem for the politicians to fix. If the docs doesn't have the time to help me, I presume they'll send me away. And it's probably a very rare thing that a patient would die just because they had to wait a further 15 minutes to be seen: if it's a really urgent life-threatening problem, they're quite at liberty to tell the receptionist that, and I would think it very odd if a genuine case was just told to get back into the line and wait. There are also accident and emergency departments in hospitals. Nor do I have the medical expertise to judge for myself the urgency of my ailments.....I could present with a cough that turned out to be lung cancer for all I know.

And who else in our society practises such perfect ethics? The doctors aren't exactly the epitomy of fair play themselves. I can clearly remember the result of a government initiative a year or two ago - the gov offered them more pay for more work, and the GPs somehow found a loophole that allowed them to take the money without having to do the extra work. Did they alert the gov to this problem? No way - they just took the money.

I'd give a lot to live in a truly caring, sharing society. If I did, I'd want with all my heart to play my full part in it. But what we have is a cruel, unequal mess. Why should I bust a gut sticking to high faluting social rules while everybody else is breaking them? My advice is therefore to look after Number One, because nobody else will, except perhaps an exceptionally devoted partner.

A lot of them are like this-I have a LOT of health problems. Emergency room visits seem to be the absolute worst and the nurses will go out of their way to make you feel like you shouldn't even be there.

They are highly unorganized... last time I went in, they had it written down that I was on 5 pain medications... the doctors/nurses never bothered to take them off of the list over the course of 5 years no matter what, so when the doctor saw this, she was a royal b****. She actually asked me if I was in pain, which was why I was there (severe back pain from some pulled muscles), and offered me something that is on my list of things I just cannot take. When I told her I couldn't take it, she basically said "oh well, then you get nothing for it" and sent me home.

I was really angry at the time.... but I have to remember... these people are dealing with people trying to manipulate drugs out of them all day long.

I've also learned that these offices have ways of communication with one another, but rarely ever use them... and almost all of them are just plain highly unorganized.

I'm looking for a new GP at the moment, because my other one would set up appointments for me, then take walk-in appointments before me... so I'd wind up sitting there in the waiting room for an hour or so after my appointment time. They also sent me someone else's bill, along with a complete list of testing this person had done... talk about confidentiality, lol.

But my doctors... as long as I've been sick (chronic kidney infections, polycystic ovarian disease, blood sugar problems, gall bladder issues, and many more), have NEVER known what I went into the emergency room or urgent care for. They've held me overnight for observation before, on the terms I couldn't be released until they got to the hospital to see me, and not shown up for 3-4 days... nursing staff didn't know why they wanted to keep me.

The communication between the offices just isn't there, and communication IN the office isn't always the best. A lot of these people get into the job wanting to help, but see so much crap out of people (addicts is a big problem that jades them), that they just don't have the patience after a while.

As others have said, it's best to have a note pad with things jotted down on it. If your list is too lengthy to go over in one visit, take it home with you and finish it up next time, or leave it with the doctor to read over-that's if you trust your doctor to read it. Otherwise, the doc will likely pull it out next visit and continue going over it.

I wouldn't leave messages with receptionists, as they tend to just jot any old thing down and set you up an appointment. Rarely does the doc really know what's going on if you try to pass the message that way-at least, in my experience.

...and try to just have patience in general. They sure aren't going to do it for you and tend to get kind of cranky due to lack of knowing what is going on.