There was one main reason why I went down to Crawley Hospital’s ‘Urgent Treatment Centre’ last night ((apart from the obvious one)) – I find normal GP surgeries inconvenient. That’s why I like the concept of the polyclinics.
It was a bit of a drag waiting to be seen, but for me its a straight choice between turning up and waiting and calling the doctor – from work because that is where I would be when they open – to make an appointment, getting a call back from a triage nurse and explaining my delicate groinal condition while a work colleague is loitering trying to catch my attention, and ideally getting an appointment in eight or nine hours time or having to leave work if its any earlier.
Actually I’m sure its not that bad, and everyone else round here has no problems with the doctors but that is just my perception of it all. I would much rather have a place where I could just turn up at six or seven in the evening and wait for a bit to see a GP. For me the biggest problem with what I still think of as the Walk-in Centre is that there is only one of them so it is busy.
Weekends are another problem. In this particular case I need to get a dressing changed. The surgeon said that my GP’s practice nurse can do it, butof course it needs doing before Monday, leaving me with going back to the hospital as my only option. That probably contributes to why there can be queues at the hospital: people needing routine stuff like that who just can’t get to their GP during normal surgery hours.
We still need normal GPs. They do the job perfectly well for a lot of their patients, but unless they are going to open at seven or earlier and stay open until nine or later there are a lot of us who find them inconvenient so I’m a big fan of the idea of polyclinics. I don’t think they would lead to closing GPs but would be a valuable supplement to them.
I was only going through the hospital system at 2:00am because my company works half days on Fridays and I had been trying to live with a problem until Friday and go to the Doctors in the afternoon: a cunning plan that was thwarted only by the pain getting too much by late on Thursday.
My gf thinks polyclinics are a great idea. But then again the place she was registered at in Brum for many years was pretty much a polyclinic already.
It’s just a new name for an old idea – a GP centre which has a lot of services under one roof rather than having them spread all over.
The Broadfield surgery is very well-equipped: it is just let down by the opening hours.
There is obviously a need for no-fuss walk-in facilities – just look at the surgeries at most London terminus stations now. Anyone can walk in off the street and see a doctor – for a price. A free version of that would be handy.
The old Ravendene surgery facility was handy too. It is now based at the hospital which is fine but it feels OTT going to the hospital for an out of hours ear syringing.