Are GPs useless?

Gp's have varied for me.

One who couldn't tell I had a broken finger (even though the people in the hospital I eventually went to spotted it straight away), and told me to go home because it was just "sore" (swollen to about three times the width, purple and black bruising and unable to move it)

Another one who cleared up my only batch of tonsillitis incredibly quickly.

Yet I have a skin condition on my right arm which hasn't been identified by any bloody GP, just prescribed different things, told to go home, and when they don't work still won't send me to a dermatologist, stating that it's just a rash. Yeah that I've had for about 4 years...
 
regulus said:
Maybe they'll be more interested if they didn't have to service a nation of moaning hypochondriacs that run to the GP for every little niggle. Even on this very forum there was a thread on illnesses and afflictions people suffer on here. It ran into tens of pages.

Start charging for GP visits. Only £20 or so. Hopefully it'll dissuade the moaners from the real sick people and GPs will take their work and people serious again.
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or the poor will not be able to afford to go.
 
yer_averagejoe: A lot of doctors have never seen Lymes disease, when I had it many years ago,when I was around Rothes area, the young doctor didn't have a clue, but he had the sense to call in a locum, who been a doctor 50 years or so, who identify it straight away.
 
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My GP is fantastic....if he doesn't know enough about something he tells me and we agree another appointment to give him time to get the relevant information. Because of my rather unusual set of circumstances this is understandable.....some doctors have tried to blag their way through tbh, but not all GPs are useless like the OP implies, most are excellent and we would be a lot worse off without them.
 
Some are useless,Theres a couple of them at my local doctors and they just want you out as quick as possible without me actually finish describing whats up,And i dont go very often at all its very rare im ill.

I can understand they are probably very busy,but come on..thats not out fault.

Do they get extra money for each prescription they prescribe?..could explain why.
 
powlesY said:
Why are you making it out like a competition again?
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No competition. I'm simply responding to your rant at the NHS. A service that is generally excellent, including the General Practice arm, and provides free at the point of entry treatment for millions mostly without incident.

I already pointed you in the direction of PALS. However, if things are as bad as you say they are, then you should be at A&E not grumbling on here.

regulus said:
Start charging for GP visits. Only £20 or so. Hopefully it'll dissuade the moaners from the real sick people and GPs will take their work and people serious again.
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Jolteh said:
That pretty much goes against the single most important principle that the NHS was founded on. ("Free at the point of entry.")

Not to pee on your campfire, but you'll be seeing the same doctor you'd have seen on the NHS, just sat in a different office.
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Not only that but for genuinely long term ill people, like myself, who needs to see their GP regularly they would be effectively financially punished for just being unwell. Not a good idea.

The Private thing is hilarious. I was once on a ward in hospital and some guy opposite was raising the roof because BUPA had put him in the same ward as us NHS people. His doctor after seeing him was the same specialist that treated me. Couldn't help but smile at the guy for the rest of his stay. He didn't think it was funny but I thought (somewhat childishly, I admit) that it was hilarious.
 
Castiel said:
My GP is fantastic....if he doesn't know enough about something he tells me and we agree another appointment to give him time to get the relevant information. Because of my rather unusual set of circumstances this is understandable.....some doctors have tried to blag their way through tbh, but not all GPs are useless like the OP implies, most are excellent and we would be a lot worse off without them.
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Same here. She knows that I actually have at least an equivalent knowledge of my main condition and thus treats me with a level of professionalism, discussing options and so on. She also happens to be very frank and honest.

I've been with her when she has looked things up and even had her admit that the problem needed a more specialist viewpoint. I'm a complex case and not once has she ever tried to brag her way round the issue.

Some doctors are under extreme pressure thanks to targets just to get people in and out. That's the biggest problem with the NHS. Take my surgery: Thanks to targets set by Labour on getting appointments it means I can only ring up on the day (at 8am) and this creates havoc for me getting time off work and also means if you don't get in the telephone queue promptly at 8am you aren't getting an appointment* but they can show 100% that they hit the targets.


* unless you get an emergency appointment but theses don't show on the targets.
 
Some certainly aren't very good, but I have come across plenty of outstanding GPs. The one I saw this morning was excellent, just wish the news had been better!
 
drunkenmaster said:
GP's are inherantly useless, these are doctors that see a very narrow set of symptoms incredibly often and see rare problems very infrequently and they usually can't diagnose them themselves. IE they refer someone for a variety of problems and a specialist diagnoses them. When a doctor works in a GP and sees thousands of patients a year and 98% of them have a cold, then the first thing a GP's mind see's when you say something that bears any similarity to a cold or flu and they automatically think you have nothing really wrong with you.

It's natural, you see something constantly you jump to conclusions. Biggest problem with GP's is sending them to school for 7 years, learning how to take out an appendix, put in chest tubes, diagnose lots of things then stick them in an office for 40 years using NONE of that knowledge, is its a joke. GP's are basically anything from 5 to 40 years out of practice of doing real diagnosing.

The system as it is now is laughably poor, huge resources poured into gp's when they really should be on 30k a year, doing basic assessments with 1/4 of the training and more money for real doctors in hospitals to diagnose more difficult cases.

As for knowing about your symptoms and directing your doctor, that can work, some doctors are willing many if not most treat you badly if you do this, assuming you're faking/looking for attention/depressed. LIkewise not everyone has a simple case, many people have multiple things wrong with them, where you are looking for experienced medical help and its just not forthcoming.
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I'm sorry to hear you've had bad experiences Drunkenmaster, but I don't think you know what you are talking about, at all.
 
have to say most of the gp's i have seen can never be bother with you
seem preoccupied with whatever else...

my new gp is much to be desired
we cant even understand each other half the time

been in pain for over 4months now
he first said

"if pain worse ambulance"

its only just got through to him
i may need a specialist i mean after all i only have

"maybe slight dark of liver"

im also on some meds right now and the bugger frequently
forgets what he prescribed and goes on a tangent of some other pills

i wonder if his CV reads

Deaf as a post smells faintly of cabbage
bone idle not botherd of the job in hand
theme hospital anyone?

Man i need a new doctor
 
.:Blindfaith:. said:
Man i need a new doctor
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Then go get one? If you're not happy with the service, go to a different practice, it's that simple.

You could have signed up at a new practice in probably less time that it took to mistype that post.

My god, you people! We live with probably the best healthcare solution that has ever existed, and you're calling your GPs **** for things like being prescribed what you think are the wrong antibiotics (because obviously your two minutes of knowledge obtained through Google trumps years of medical education and clinical experience). Even in the modern world, it's a rare luxury knowing that if we ever get really ill, we don't have to spend more time worrying about the bill than whether we'll die or not. Ask an American how much they pay for their healthcare!

Given the frequency at which doctor's pay seems to crop up in these threads, I'm inclined to think that the underlying issue is more about jealousy than anything else.
 
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All of the GPs at my current practice are excellent. And all the ones at the old one were too bar one. Most people don't really have a clue what a GP is there for a really qualified to do either.

You could always move GPs or go private.
 
all the GP's I have met in the UK so far have been awful, I'm amazed how they can make any meaningful diagnosis by just asking questions but never actually checking anything which involves "touching the patient" (heartbeat, swipes, Lymph nodes and the stethoscope on display around the neck is more or less for decorative purposes to look more important then the nurses).

Standard therapy is either prescribing paracetamol, antibiotics....pretty sure that's what i would get when stumbling in there with a knife sticking out my back....also with the advice to check back in after 3 days to see if it got better.

If it wouldn't be so annoying i would laugh....maybe there are good GP somewhere, i just haven't had the pleasure to meet them yet. Luckily I'm a pretty healthy person!!
 
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