Experience of GP Services- Person 7

um So how would you describe the overall service that your GP offers? Um, I feel like they are all right for responding to, um, queries if you go through the email. But I found it incredibly difficult to get in contact with them. Any other means no one's allowed in because of covid. No one's been allowed in for a while

Their phone lines are quite often down or not taking responded, or it just seems to be that their website to book appointments or seems to be down quite a lot. I don't have any major health conditions, but if I did, I feel like it wouldn't be great. Yeah

And, um, how do you think the kind of what I'm hearing is the inaccessibility of it? How do you think that's kind of affected you and your, um, experience of the GP. So I had, um a medical thing happened and I had to get some samples taken and off the back of that, they advised me to then speak to my GP who should have got sent all of my details. So I start picking up the meds that I needed, and it took me about two weeks to get in contact to actually pick up those meds in which I need to take them pretty much every day

And so it just kind of meant after finally getting a diagnosis and finding out what I needed to do to help myself, and I was then spending several weeks of just kind of being quite annoyed by the fact that it literally would have probably taken a two minute phone call. And that seemed to be impossible. And it ended up just being a really big rig role to work out how to actually get through to them so I could get the care I needed

So the inaccessibility just really makes it a lot harder to to be able to accurately get the care that I need. Yeah, so I guess on the back of that, how do you when if you know, how do you find that they manage sort of the administration? So whether that's referrals records, how how have you found that in the past? I mean, I haven't had much of an issue related to that and since it did get set up in granted to take a while, but I've just been able to go and order my repeat prescription whenever I need it without too much hassle. So I think maybe on that side of it, they do seem to be all right

And I don't know if it maybe just was to do with the fact that it was a pandemic, and obviously they had quite a lot on. But I have just found the whole process rather slow and difficult. Yeah, and I think it just made it a lot more inaccessible

Yeah. Do you think, um, with with the sort of that inaccessibility do you find that it influences your decision on whether you speak to or go into a GP office? 100%? There is something that I have currently where I should speak to a medical professional. And I spent around an hour earlier this week on the phone waiting, and it just reached a point where I rang really early in the mornings

The queues would hopefully be smaller, and they still never got round to me, and and I still do need to go and get that checked out. But at this point in time, I think my other option, which I probably might. I end up using is to just sit in the one on one call waiting room

Because in the past, I haven't actually mentioned I ended up using one on one who then sends the stuff from that to my GP. And then my GP seems to act on it. But actually getting in contact with them directly seems my own impossible

Cool. So if you could say something to your GP, um, to kind of help improve the experiences that you've had recently, what would you say? Just have an accessible web service? Um, because I think I'd find it far easier to be able to, um, just go on something online and, like, put down and I'd like an appointment. And then if they get back to me at a later date, that'd be fine

But it's just the whole issue of I don't really have time to spend several hours of my weekdays because I'm working just sitting on the phone, trying to get someone to answer me so I can literally just ask for an appointment. And I don't know, just make the whole system a bit easier or get more people on the phones. Cool

Thank you..