Reply from Old Anchor Surgery (Branch of Stokewood Surgery)
Wed, 24 Jan 2018 12:34:50 Z

I am afraid I am going to defend our case. Patients are put with the most appropriate clinician according to the information they give when booking an appointment. This list has been approved by the Royal College of General Practitioners and then looked over again (taking into consideration the skill set of our nurse and nurse practitioners) and approved by the Partners at Stokewood Surgery. Our nurse practitioners are highly trained, skilled and experienced staff who are also fully qualified prescribers - nurse practitioners are actually more like a GP than a practice nurse. If the nurse practitioner was in any way concerned about you and felt a GP opinion was required, she will summon the duty doctor to assist. Unfortunately there is a national shortage of GPs and the only way we can meet demand across the NHS is for the appropriate people to see patients, and this is not always a GP. The use of our NP to assist with urgent on the day appointments means we are freeing up routine appointments for patients with long term conditions or other ongoing medical issues to see their own (or the same) GP, thereby improving consistency which you point out can be an issue. We have also reduced our wait for routine appointments (provided the patient is not restricting availability to very specific days or times) from 5 weeks to around 3 weeks - which considering the winter pressures and flu epidemic currently affecting general practice, is an incredible achievement and we are very proud of this. Very occasionally routine clinics run late but sometimes something unexpected will occur and has to be dealt with. The urgent clinic may overrun but the fact that we are offering urgent on the day appointments to everyone who requests one, and usually with patients being seen within the hour, is the balance. As this name implies it is an urgent clinic and therefore some conditions will be more serious and require more GP or nurse practitioner time. We really are trying to do the very best we can and I would urge you to read our newsletter about the changes we have been making in order to reduce wait times but this will only happen if patients also accept that we have to make changes and use clinicians appropriately, and this may mean that you are seen by another highly trained clinical professional, they just may not be a GP.