The government tell us that help is coming, in the form of phalanxes of newly trained doctors, but how many years do we have to wait?

• IN many senses, the clarity of our connection with our doctors is more relevant now than it has been for years.

With the advent of Covid we have had to get used to a relationship where we cannot see our general practitioners in the way that we used to. We may have a conversation with a receptionist who asks us what the problem is?

It is here that matters get a bit flaky. Not only are these receptionists acting as the gatekeepers for GPs but their qualification to make decisions may be based on minimal clinical training.

Doctors have that experience and they are bound by the Hippocratic Oath or other regulatory practices, while the receptionists are not.

We may be offered a telephone appointment several weeks ahead with perhaps no option of a face-to-face appointment. In the interim we may choose to self-medicate which involves going to a chemist and outlining our symptoms.

Here again we are on shifting sands if the chemist does not know us. They might recommend something which could work but which may not take any contra-indications into account. These chemists have their pharmaceutical training but not the experience of a doctor.

A further complication is that the chemists will be selling you a product which you might have got on prescription for no charge, although you will have been supporting the National Health Service through National Insurance and General Taxation.

Good for the pharmaceutical companies but not for you and me, especially if we are on benefits or financially straitened, given current circumstances.

It would be good to think that the cavalry are on the way in the guise of clearer instructions and backing from central government, but apart from paying ever-increasing bills to private providers, many of them American, the public are under the cosh! For one procedure I had to go from Camden to Stratford, Enfield and Temple Fortune.

It is possible that the patient participation groups that every surgery is required to have would help to improve the situation. My own surgery has not organised such a group for about two years. It could be worth checking if your own surgery has one and joining the regular meetings to improve the practice.

In all of this, doctors complain of burn-out, causing them to take sick leave and early retirement. Two vaguely hopeful aspects are the presence of the internet, which enables a form of self diagnosis, and the National Health Service Helplines, which is another type of telephone service.

The government tell us that help is coming, in the form of phalanxes of newly trained doctors, but how many years do we have to wait? More a case of “the doctor will NOT see you now”.

CHRISTOPHER MASON
Malden Crescent, NW1