Physio Appointment via phone call!

Barny1979

parcival said:

I think a lot of the NHS is in hiding. It's about time they started routinely offering face to face, after all many of them and us have been jabbed. 

In hiding? Or trying to cope with the backlog?

briskbeats

Had asthma review over the phone. It’s a good job I have a peak flow meter. Otherwise it would have been a waste of time.

My GP practice has their GPs on a rota for the vaccine as I’ve been given both doses by two GPs

elsien

I'm not convinced about the cleaning the room in between patients thing. It seems to depend in large part what they are doing. I have accompanied several people in hospital appointments with the consultant (discussion rather than examination) and there was no cleaning going on in between seeing people. And one meeting was held in the staff room after I queried social distancing with 6 people in a tiny room - they did move the chocolates out of the way first. 
I'm not knocking it, after all we were seen which was the important bit. Just pointing out that rigorous cleaning between patients is not automatic. 

tooldle

I've had a couple of telephone appointments with the musculoskeletal clinic. As another poster says, the caller will guide you through a range of exercises/movements to assess your particular condition. It worked well for me. What didn't work is the recommended treatment of a steroid injection, which is on hold due to Covid.
I've been seeing an Osteopath privately at the cost of £40 a session. If you want in person reassurance, a one off private appointment might be money well spent.

briskbeats

parcival said:

Our GP service has many rooms for doctors / nurses but it would be easier to break into Alcatraz than get inside the surgery.

On front page on one of today’s papers is a woman who had phone calls from GPs fobbing off its just indigestion. Turns out it was cancer.

How many others will be in a similar situation?

[Deleted User]

briskbeats said:

parcival said:

Our GP service has many rooms for doctors / nurses but it would be easier to break into Alcatraz than get inside the surgery.

On front page on one of today’s papers is a woman who had phone calls from GPs fobbing off its just indigestion. Turns out it was cancer.

How many others will be in a similar situation?

Thousands potentially
My GP earns over £80k pa for sitting at a desk using the phone - something that a call centre could handle easily 

Davesnave

Deleted_User said:

Covid has meant that I am STILL unable to get a hospital physio appointment other that via a phone call. 
How on earth can I be assessed via a phone call?

It's still very patchy, so far as I can see, which isn't far. We are still in our little bubble worlds.

My wife has been stuck on pills since Corvid struck. They work, but no heavy duty painkiller is a free ride. Prior to the panic she was getting somewhere with physio, but it had taken years to get into the right groove with that, so we're expecting a long climb out.

Of course, this is not on the same scale as those who've missed diagnosis of cancer etc through the 4.5 million cancelled appointments. Good luck to them.

sheramber

parcival said:

Our GP service has many rooms for doctors / nurses but it would be easier to break into Alcatraz than get inside the surgery.

The physio may not be in a GP surgery.
My physio had one room.
When I had a face to ace appointment with my GP I had to wait in the car park to be invited in. He was using one room which was  normally used as a sterile room.  

parcival

This not seeing patients must be one reason why the backlog is increasing and will continue as more incorrect telephone diagnosis are made.
I know for a fact that GP's at my surgery are spending time at a vaccination centre (where I think they get extra money per shot delivered?). This is a waste of expertise when they should be SEEING patients.

Manxman_in_exile

I'm a retired NHS manager and I'd have to say I'm amazed at the extent to which the NHS still seems to be ham-strung by Covid.  And I have always previously promoted and lauded the NHS (except for a terrible A&E experience a couple of years ago), particularly its physio services.  

My GP referred me for a physio appointment a couple of months ago.  A few days later I got a 'phone call which I expected to be to offer me a face to face appointment.  Actually it was to carry out an assessment over the 'phone.  Fair enough I thought, but having had a lot of experience of physio treatment over the years, I was rather skeptical as to what an assessment over the 'phone would achieve.  At the end of the call - and to my utter astonishment! - she advised me that if the problem persisited and I thought I needed to physically see someone, then I should contact a private physio service which she named - and which it would appear I am going to have to do.  OK - I can afford it, but what if I couldn't?

I think the argument about having to clean the room between patients is a bit weak.  I had to attend our local eye casualty clinic two weeks ago.  (Getting referrered there was an adventure in itself - see below*).  I waited in a waiting room with about 20 other patients.  The room was large enough for chairs to be socially distanced.  I attended the clinic twice over ten days and I had consultations with two different clinicians in two different rooms on each attendance.  The only cleaning I observed during my two lengthy attendances was a wipe-down with some kind of cleaning agent of the chairs used by patients in the waiting room and the treatment rooms.  I doubt anything much more sophisticated is needed in a physio treatment room.  The only extra work required is a wipe-down of the bench/couch - if a patient has used it.

And about six months ago my wife had to be referred to the acute medical assessment unit at our local hospital.  After eventually getting to see a GP for the referral, the GP told my wife that they were working longer hours and wasting more time than usual because of initial telephone consultations as they were nearly always having to have a face to face as well.  The majority of their usual patients - the "worried well" - were too scared to contact the surgery in case they were asked in to be seen, so nearly everybody they spoke to on the 'phone was sufficiently sick to need to be seen personally.

I've also been diagnosed with a bilateral hernia which, if I want to get it repaired and don't want to wait a couple of years, will have to be done privately.  Again, I can afford it, but what if I couldn't?  Funny thing is, I've had F2Fs with both a radiographer to diagnose the hernia and a private surgeon to discuss a repair, but it's been impossible to see my GP - she referred me to ultrasound without seeing me!

As I've said, I'm a former NHS manager and one of it's greatest fans.  I think Covid is (or has been) an extremely serious threat to the people of this country and to the NHS.  And whilst I am certainly not an anti-vaccer, I do not share the optimism that many people seem to have that vaccination is the answer to everything and that life can simply continue as previously.  However, I think the current ways of working of the NHS are wholly unacceptable and NHS clinicians - particularly GPs - need to stop hiding from patients and to stop doing everything they can to avoid seeing them.

(*  I suffer infrequently from an auto-immune eye condition which when it flares up needs urgent treatment.  I have previously been told by the eye clinic - and by my GPs - that if I suspect it has flared up again then I need an immediate GP referral to eye casualty.  My GP has previously said they would "rubber-stamp" any required referral.  I contacted my surgery to tell them I needed a referral but, depsite my protestations, I was instead diverted by reception to something called the Urgent Eye Care Service.  I spent the next two hours trying to call them every five minutes but couldn't get through.  Eventually I gave up and - even though I know I'm not meant to do so - I rang the eye clinic myself as a self-referral and got an appointment for first thing the following day.  Later research seemed to indicate that the Urgent Eye Care Service is a national call service put in place because of Covid to divert people away from GPs.  But so far as I could tell - because I could never contact them - they will only refer you to a local optician, which is not what I needed and would only have delayed treatment unnecessarily)