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Asked by Mel to Chris, Emma, Jonathan, Katharine, Shehla, Simon on 15 Jun 2017.
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Christopher Symonds answered on 15 Jun 2017:
The fact that a very small percentage of patients take up a very large proportion of our time by making demands that we can not possibly achieve in the manner they would like us to.
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Emma Rowe answered on 15 Jun 2017:
The demand on appointments is very high and unfortunately it is a limited resource (there are only so many appointments) so it can be very hard to satisfy everyone.
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Simon Browes answered on 15 Jun 2017:
Some days no matter how hard I work I cannot get everything done that I need to. I have learned to stop when I know I have done my best, but it is not always easy to leave work behind when I go home.
Some days in the practice there is just more demand for appointments than we have available. We try to speak to everyone on the phone and will always see people if it is important. Dealing with people’s frustrations can be hard. It is important not to take it personally, but that is not easy when you really care about what you are doing.
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Katharine Bradbury answered on 15 Jun 2017:
The time pressure – we give patients 10 minute appointments but not everything can be dealt with in 10 minutes. Giving more time to a patient who needs it means everyone else has to wait longer. Even if I spent just 3 minutes extra with each patient in my surgery the last patient will have to wait 45 minutes longer. This is something that’s really difficult to manage.
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Jonathan Harte answered on 16 Jun 2017:
Not enough time for the patients we see. Like Katherine said, we get 10 minutes per patient per appointment. We can’t simply offer more time because then we’d see less patients per day and waiting times would increase further.
Also the increasing bureaucracy in the NHS, paperwork a nd complicated rules around referrals/ tests etc. That adds hours to the working week too.
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