The man ahead of me in the queue for coffees and breakfasts swivelled around.
He was staring at me in a way which was a bit too close for comfort.
It was vaguely reminiscent of an eagle-eyed GP who had just spotted something worrying about a patient. This was a frequent outcome during routine face-to-face consultations with our family doctors before Covid.
Suddenly, the man in the cafe confided in me: “I’ve not seen one of those in a long time, you know.” He nodded towards my belly.
I looked down; yes, I could do with losing a few kilos, as my GP would agree. Luckily, it wasn’t this which caught his eye.
“You don’t see denim shirts like yours these days. I used to wear them a lot – very nice indeed,” he added. And, with that, he ambled away, balancing his full Scottish on a plate.
Slightly eccentric, I suppose, but I kept rolling his words around in my head. Very polite, on the face of it – or was he winding me up?
What are GP practices like these days?
By coincidence, I was grabbing a coffee before a visit to our GP practice with my wife for a check-up after her major operation.
“I’ve not seen one of those in a long time,” flashed through my mind again. It dawned on me that I could say the same about GPs in general. They retreated behind the barricades when Covid swooped in and are still in defensive mode, even though pandemic restrictions eased all around them.
Practices were ordered into a triage system for prioritising patients and reducing in-person appointments dramatically for protection through the pandemic. But patients lost automatic rights to face-to-face appointments; online or telephone consultations were the default.
Now, I had a chance to see how they were getting on these days at our practice.
Much to our surprise, the surgery car park was overflowing. I counted about 25 cars and only a couple of available spaces. I thought things had returned to normal; teeming with patients perhaps.
An empty box of masks at the entrance – face cover is still mandatory in the NHS – seemed to confirm they were busy.
So, I stuffed my hand into a large white package on the same table to search for more masks. But I came out clutching an assortment of free male and female condoms.
A passing woman gave me a strange sideways glance.
It was out of the question to enter the surgery wearing a condom instead of a mask, so
a fresh box was hurriedly supplied. An embarrassing episode – I should have announced myself to reception as Mr Bean.
No parking and unsuitable seating
The place was deserted; we were the only two patients in sight and the waiting area was a miserable place. It looked like a disused church hall, with a sparse line-up of uninviting, spaced-out chairs.
I was told the cars outside mainly belonged to staff from various NHS departments, swelling the numbers here. So, it was now a staff car park, and patients faced hunting for pay-and-display spaces in surrounding streets.
That didn’t seem fair to me: parking spaces were being prioritised as well as appointments?
Staff were apologetic, but they still had hatches battened down and decks cleared to fight Covid
My wife, wobbling about on two walking sticks after surgery, had to stand in pain because no suitable seating was available. Not enough required elevation to cushion a new hip, that is.
Staff were apologetic, but they still had hatches battened down and decks cleared to fight Covid.
I moaned a bit because I could not bear to see her in pain. They said it was due to Scottish Government rules, and I should complain to them, but surely a local manager could sort out chairs and parking?
We’ve lost something precious
Many yearn to get back to the old, personal relationships with GPs, but it will never be quite the same, it seems.
Practices always wanted to do away with on-demand personal appointments because there were too many patients and not enough doctors to go round. Covid delivered that sooner than they anticipated.
One good thing at my surgery is that I can now secure an automatic GP telephone appointment if I wish, but a medic still has final say on face-to-face.
Personally, even before Covid, I preferred telephone chats rather than sitting in a waiting room cluttered with people who didn’t need to be there.
But there was still something nagging away at me. Some of those “timewasters” with minor stuff might have been oblivious to other life-threatening conditions. That was where a skilled doctor’s training and sixth sense could tease this out.
I fear more of these cases might slip through, as GPs still mostly make contact remotely and could miss telltale visual clues.
Patient satisfaction plummeted during Covid – hardly a surprising prognosis on practice restrictions. I believe we lost something precious with our GPs which might never be found again.
David Knight is the long-serving former deputy editor of The Press and Journal
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