My Weekly’s favourite GP Dr Sarah Jarvis from TV and radio writes for you
WORDS: DR SARAH JARVIS
How do you contact your GP surgery? Chances are, if you’d been asked that question just five years ago, the answer from everyone would have been the same; “I ring up in the morning and make a GP appointment”.
Since the pandemic, all that has changed. At the start of the first lockdown, GPs were ordered to “triage” all patients before seeing them.
They were given no choice but to lock their doors and find out whether they had a medical reason to believe patients needed seeing before letting them in.
The government had already been trying to get GPs to start using online consultations for years.
GP numbers were going down and there was huge pressure on general practice.
The government believed that the situation could be improved by a digital approach. Patients would submit a form detailing their complaints and the practice would review the form and decide what was needed.
This might be a face-to-face appointment, a phone call, a prescription, a referral to the pharmacy etc.
And so, the age of the “digital front door” was born.
Since the pandemic, the issues facing general practice have been well-publicised. The number of fully qualified GPs is falling. At the same time, the number of people needing appointments continues to rise.
This is partly because hospital waiting lists are so high – meaning more people are in pain while they wait for operations.
Some patients really miss the old days, when they could phone up and get an appointment with their regular GP the same day.
Others tell me that they struggle with technology, and filling in an online form can be confusing.
But general practice is changing, and many people actually find the online service more convenient.
You can fill in a form whenever you want. You don’t have to wait until the practice phone lines open, then discover you’re number 15 in the queue. Because you tell the GP what the problem is, they can often direct you to the most suitable service more quickly than offering an appointment with them.
For instance, there are now lots of h
