GP

What advice would you give to someone who has moved to a new area looking for a new GP?

If you moved house, then very carefully, you ask questions before you go on register with a doctor. Once you are registered with a local G.P. then you'll find it very, very difficult to change. It's very important to think carefully before you actually register. Go pick up the leaflets of surgeries and then find which surgeries are around in your area, and if necessary, ring up your local primary Care Trust and get the number from NHS direct and register it. So, you got the list of the practices and then ask your neighbors because what they practice themselves are signed in their booklets. What you may read on a league table about G.P. practices may be very different from the actual reality. The leaflet may say we would see patients within 24 hours but the reality of it may mean that you seen by a doctor who don't know that you may actually may mean that you receive an emergency within 24 hours but you may have a way to wait for regular appointment. So, ask your new neighbors what do they think about the best practices on the area and who would they suggest to register with. Be reminded if you're elderly, your needs might be different from young children.

What should you consider when trying to find a new GP?

The other thing you need to look at when you're thinking of registering for the general practice is look at their opening hours. Most general practices are open standard hours, morning and afternoon. Some shut at lunch time. Some will have a half-day, when they're shut for the whole of the afternoon. But some GP practices will have a surgery which starts early in the morning, which could be very useful if you've got to get off to work. And some GP practices will have surgies that run on into the evening, which again could be very useful if you don't want to take time off work to get in to see the doctor. Very few practices are open at weekends, and out-of-hours services are generally covered by an out-of-hours consortium that's run from other primary care trusts. You won't be seen by your own GP at night anymore.

What information should a patient provide when going to register with a new GP?

When you first register with a GP, you will be asked stuff about name and address. Also, most GP practitioner will ask you to fill in a questionnaire which will give details about your life style, your occupation, last time you had a pretty smoke, whether you drink much alcohol, whether you taken the exercise and also increasingly it will ask about previous illnesses and any medications you are taking and if you have got quite a complex medical history or you suffer from a long term condition such as asthma or maximo or you had heart disease, than the practician is likely to ask you to come in for what is called for a new patient check where you can get the medication and everything put onto the computer. But if you got a straight forward history you can just register with the practice and you probably would not need to be seen.

What will happen during the first appointment?

When you go along to your first Appointment, it's generally with a nurse, and not with a doctor, and they will run through your previous medical history so it can be put down on the computer at your new practice. The other thing that's very helpful to us is if you have a computer print-out of your medications that you're already on, if you can take that along, it helps us to transfer it onto our new computer system. Generally, doctors aren't very happy just handing out a repeat prescription from a repeat list from a previous surgery. We will do it if it's very urgent, but we much prefer to go through it with you individually so we've got it onto our system correctly.

What should patients do to get the most out of an appointment with their GP?

Most GP's appointments are between seven and ten minutes long, which means it can be squashed if you've got lots of problems that need to be dealt with at one time. Generally GP's dread the shopping list coming in which has got to be dealt with in seven minutes. If you've got a lot of problems, then ask the receptionist whether you should make a double appointment to allow more time. If you have problems remembering your symptoms, the order in which they occurred, it's perfectly all right to write it down as a list so you can tick it off as you go down. The thing to do is to try and put the most important problem first. All too often patients will come in and they'll start talking about something vague, like a split toenail, and then just as they're leaving the door, they'll say "Oh, by the way," and something really major will occur. Try and put the most important thing first.

What questions should you ask?

GPs don't mind being asked questions. Neither do we mind people coming in with computer printouts. But we do mind patients who are pedantic and try and tell us our job. So, if you are going in with some information you've got off the Internet, be prepared to have an open discussion about it, so be prepared to listen to the GP's views. Similarly with newspaper cuttings. We don't like people coming in saying, "I want this drug," which you've read about in one of the national newspapers. But you have a clear right to say, "Have you heard about this? What do you think about it?" So be prepared to have an open discussion, and try not to be confrontational.

What if the subject matter is embarrassing?

Though you may find a problem a bit embarrassing, it's important to remember that GP's are dealing with embarrassing problems every day as part of their job and we are just about unshockable. Particularly if you've been qualified for five, ten years. You'd be amazed the amount of things we have seen. The every day people just don't come across at all and we are used to just not batting an eyelid. We also know that problems are embarrassing for patients and we have to deal with them subtly. So, just try not to worry about it and don't say, "Oh, I'm really embarrassed about this." We know you'll be really embarrassed about it. Just try and deal with it as we do. It's a matter of fact. It's a problem that's got to be dealt with.

When should a patient consider asking for a second opinion?

If you are not happy with the advice you've been given or you just weren't happy with the demeanor of the doctor, the attitude of the doctor, it is perfectly okay to ask for a second opinion. What you need to do is go on to your GP and discuss it with your GP. It m ay be that actually you've been given very good advice; you just didn't like the way it was given to you. But if your GP also thinks, "Hang on a minute, I'm not happy with that either," then the GP will certainly be happy to arrange a second opinion for you. It may be at a hospital near by or it may be at a hospital that's further away. And, again, you can discuss that with your GP. In the near future, the plan is that patients should be able to see a doctor anywhere in the country for hospital treatment. Quite how practical that's going to be, I don't know, but that's the theory that's in the pipeline.

Can the patient choose where the second opinion comes from?

If you want a second opinion from a GP, it actually can be quite difficult. You can only go within the GP group that you are registered with. You cannot go to a GP at a different practice. That's not allowed. You have to have your GP services from within a practice that you are registered at. Again, this may change and the other place you can go is to the walk-in centers and the out of hour centers, but quite often they are manned by nurses, rather than doctors and you can't get ongoing care there. But you may be able to get a quick second opinion about a problem that you have.

What do you do if you feel your GP has given you poor service?

If you are unhappy with the service that UGP has given you that should be a complain procedure set up within the practice. the first thing that you should knowingly do is to write the practice manager and who can then address your graven your problems that you had and then practice manager may suggest you come and talk about the problem that they had or may suggests you come to see the other doctor in the surgery the first thing that you do is to see the practice manager