The NHS
Posted: July 2nd, 2019, 12:51 pm
I appreciate that this is a huge topic but I am prompted to post after my first visit to a GP for a very long while for a very minor problem but one for which I was given some antibiotics. We have a good service where I live. I called the surgery around 9 am, got a telephone appointment for later in the morning which resulted in a face to face consultation and a prescription which I then took to the pharmacy, and left five minutes later with the required medication. All for free of course.
An amazing service and it left me feeling almost guilty for making no financial contribution. I have been thinking about that ever since. If I did have to pay say £10 to see the GP, I would be happy enough to pay that but whether I like it or not it would change the dynamics of the relationship. I would then become a paying customer and could get bolshie if the service was not up to what I felt I needed. As it is, whilst I did not in any way feel like a supplicant, I was well aware of the fact that I was being put in a privileged position because had I simply called to ask for a non urgent appointment I would probably have been offered one a week tomorrow. I therefore made certain that I was wasting no one's time and showed (I hope) that I was very grateful which made for a pleasant experience, hopefully all round.
So however the NHS problems are sorted out, if they ever are, nothing is quite as easy as it might seem. And a fee to see the GP would I am sure be full of exemptions, a bit like the fee for prescriptions (which we no longer have in Scotland)
Dod
An amazing service and it left me feeling almost guilty for making no financial contribution. I have been thinking about that ever since. If I did have to pay say £10 to see the GP, I would be happy enough to pay that but whether I like it or not it would change the dynamics of the relationship. I would then become a paying customer and could get bolshie if the service was not up to what I felt I needed. As it is, whilst I did not in any way feel like a supplicant, I was well aware of the fact that I was being put in a privileged position because had I simply called to ask for a non urgent appointment I would probably have been offered one a week tomorrow. I therefore made certain that I was wasting no one's time and showed (I hope) that I was very grateful which made for a pleasant experience, hopefully all round.
So however the NHS problems are sorted out, if they ever are, nothing is quite as easy as it might seem. And a fee to see the GP would I am sure be full of exemptions, a bit like the fee for prescriptions (which we no longer have in Scotland)
Dod