An article in praise of GP receptionists - Medical Matters with Derry GP Dr Tom Black
I was on a visit to the wake house of one of my patients recently when the woman of the house asked me to pass on her thanks to the receptionists in my practice. They were brilliant she said, always friendly and helpful sorting out appointments, prescriptions, and blood tests.
General practice is under fierce pressure at the moment due to underfunding and understaffing not to mention the huge waiting lists for hospital services and casualty. Yet through it all GP receptionists do their job as best they can with skills honed through years of patient contact and experience.
I’ve worked in my practice since 1989 and two of my reception staff were there when I started and know everything about the patients, their grannies and their cousins. Such rich local knowledge is gold dust and helps the receptionists and their colleagues to do the best they can for the families we look after through their many generations. They will do their best for “their patients” ensuring that those with the greatest needs will be seen and sorted quickly. They know who the squeaky wheels are because they’ve talked to them thousands of times before (no exaggeration here) and yes even the squeaky wheels will get sorted but not before a sick child or a terminally ill patient – staff all know who the terminal / palliative care patients are because their names are written in red on a whiteboard in the common room so that their care is always prioritised.
I appreciate that many patients will understand and agree with what I’ve written up to this point as it’s their experience, but I also know that many people resent GP receptionists as they see them as the guardians of the GP Service obstructing their access and demands. What I can tell you is that I’ve worked in every GP practice in the area and the GP receptionists are doing a very difficult job to the best of their abilities amid the dire circumstances of a failed NHS service and if you aren’t getting what you want is probably because another patient with greater need is being sorted.
Let me explain what happens when GP receptionists aren’t there to prioritise access to the GP Service because Wes Streeting the minister for health in England did something recently.
The Department of Health in England has decided in their wisdom (we know what English wisdom looks like) to impose email access on their GP practices. So you send an email and the GP practice have to sort out your problem within 24 hours. They have failed to understand that free access to a valuable service without filter will lead to infinite demand and so it rapidly turned out to be the case. In the first week GPs have reported that waiting times have quintupled (times five) and this will no doubt get worse and worse. Sick children, patients with heart attacks, strokes and terminally ill patients will have their issues lost in this tsunami of demand. Only time will tell how many patients will come to harm.
As HL Menken said “for every complex problem there is a solution that is simple, neat and wrong". Blessed are the receptionists who keep us from such harm.