There is a lot of GP bashing in the media at the moment
We as a practice, have remained seeing patients face to face on a medical need basis throughout the whole pandemic. Yes - accessing the surgery has been in a different way but if someone has needed to be seen they have been. Any changes were brought in to protect the staff to ensure continuity of service we deliver to our patients - sick staff = no service.
Our GPs, nurses, nurse practitioners health care assistants and many other team members have all seen people throughout the last 15 months and this is not going to change.
Our workload has increased hugely since this time last year, not taking into account that we have delivered over 6000 covid vaccines since January as well.
Please understand that every member of the practice team has gone above and beyond their job, sometimes at a cost to themselves (and sometimes their family) to ensure that the patients get the best possible care that we can deliver.
We do not have any control over hospital appointments or operations so please don't shout at us if you can't get what you need elsewhere in the system- we truly understand your frustrations as we have to try to navigate the system on a daily basis, often with the same outcomes as you.
We will get things wrong occasionally, and are happy to look into anything we could do better, but we never set out to annoy or upset anyone.
Our Doctors and staff are tired, we've been through the same things that you have in this pandemic whilst working harder than ever before and a patient shouting or swearing can be the straw that breaks the camel's back.
We ask that you be kind to anyone you come in to contact with at the surgery - we are trying our best to make sure every patient gets what they need and the many, many lovely patients we speak to make the job very worthwhile.