I echo the points of this GP. I do Ophthalmology in the community. I regularly lied during lockdown,claiming that the cases I saw were urgent,when mostly they were unhappy and alone.
Face to face was good for both me and the patients and I did catch a few things on the phone.
I was shocked at how many colleagues hid at home and went all Wordsworth as I wandered around a nearly empty building.
'I wandered,lonely as an f...ing cloud!'
My great uncle spent nearly a year as a doctor in Gallipoli. That was real frontline work, fetching wounded under fire.
I couldn't dishonour his memory over something as trivial as COVID.
The system has morphed into something which serves only itself and not the patients or even the staff. Seeing physical people is not the point - filling out forms in triplicate is the point. This justifies all the admin layers.
I also have to wonder at the quality of some of the medical staff. My daughter got a face-to-face with her GP and was told she was anaemic and that anaemia is very common in people from West Africa. Which was a weird thing to say to a Caucasian.
She also went to the private wing of Guy's Hospital in London during all the lockdown nonsense for a minor operation. She said the NHS part of Guy's was absolutely filthy - she was shocked (quite an achievement). The private wing upstairs, on the other hand, was like a luxury hotel.
Stuffysays sounds about right does that, a friend of mine’s son qualified as an optician a couple of years ago and even in his placement training he showed outstanding knowledge and care.
He was sought out by a private clinic and offered a job to which he promptly turned down citing to them he wouldn’t be able to help the people on ground level that needed his level of expertise and he took a job with a local family run optician’s.
Rather than lose him that clinic offered him a position where he runs a private clinic once a month on his chosen days.
My friend when visiting him was shown round this clinic which had its own hospital attached so any surgery could be done there and then if any problems were found.
this is true. but on the other hand, if you have a 'real' doctor on the phone, you might be better off than if you have a pill a prick pusher face to face. The last doc I went to refused to treat my infected ear, but wanted to put me on 3 forever pills (I accepted the metformin and it almost killed me).. She saw me for about 3 minutes. Before that, I had talked to 2 different nurses for almost 2 hours.
I concur! Back in 2022 I started to get pains in my stomach (I thought) so I phoned the GP and an anonymous doctor phoned me back and after a brief conversation ascertained that I had a problem with my stomach, based on the symptoms I gave him. How wrong can youy be! Two days later I was in hospital undergoing an angiogram and had a stent inserted. The NHS is a disgrace and it's down to successive govts, starving the NHS of resources as a prelude to its privatisation.
Yes, the “progressives”, liberals, and those on the right who are bought and paid for by Big Pharma. You’re correct, it’s not just the left, it’s on both sides of the political fence.
William Bowles it’s not been starved it’s been purposely mismanaged and allowed to be misused so the public will accept the privatisation pill of healthcare.
For decades it’s been loaded up with layers and layers of useless management to make sure all those resources are sucked dry and nothing works. It might not have been have perfect before but all the managers have made it the most wasteful inefficient service it has become.
They could have made sure not a single person used it who wasn’t entitled by just issuing a no insurance no entry into the country, they could have insisted insurance documents were to be handed over with passports for inspection and it would have saved us taxpayers billions.
Agreed it's deliberate but the fact is, the NHS has been starved of resources, short 25,000 doctors, short 30,000 nurses, 50% of hospital beds cut. Since 2010, 4 million people have died through lack of treatment.
Funny how there was never one mention of hospital beds been cut by half during the scamdemic, politicians and media let their gobs shut about that one.
The doctors and nurse shortfall I can give an insight in.
We have family and friends who reported nearly 20yrs ago on what was happening on ground level.
My husband cousin is a surgeon within the NHS and qualified the same year as one my nephew’s school friends, both tell the same thing even though they don’t know each other.
Plenty of doctors and nurses were training and graduating to then be lucky to get a job. Both say exactly the same on how the NHS went out of its way to recruit from abroad knowingly filling positions just before graduation of all our home grown talent.
Back then we had plenty who trained to then find they couldn’t get a job because they’d been cuckoo’d out on purpose by our governments.
Those unable to get a job one of home grown allocated spots, my nephews friend been one of them ended up moving abroad.
All that taxpayers money wasted yet again training doctors and nurses who end up in the private sector elsewhere.
According to them and friends who witnessed the NHS flooded with substandard employees from abroad we had an abundance of talented staff coming through until they replaced them with plenty who are lacking.
Word got out and less people bothered to train as doctors and nurses so in effect they got exactly what they wanted in starving the Nhs of good quality competent home grown talent as an excuse for why we’re still short staffed even with those they’ve recruited and brought to work here.
Dr Kendricks books look intriguing! I especially like the title of the first one shown “The Clot Thickens”! I’ll be checking out this doctor for sure. Thanks for the tip!
He's a no-nonsense GP who has been on the front line for many years and whose thoughts on such things as cholesterol, statins and heart disease are fascinating.
I just read reviews on his Cholesterol Con book, and see that his views reflect my own. No wonder he’s been maligned and targeted by the NHS/Big Pharma! He’s a rarity in the world we live in…a doctor with integrity willing to speak truth!
How depressingly true this is. Another problem with telephone appointments is the GP calling at a different time or even day rather than at the specified moment. In my case it led to me being in a situation where I was driving and with my impaired hearing could not hear properly or concentrate on what was being said. Even if not driving it can well be that you are put in a position where your privacy is compromised, on the whim of a GP not keeping to a timed appointment. Heaven forbid you fail to arrive on time at the surgery for your appointment. It works both ways!
I recently had an experience on my annual meds review, whereby the nurse increased my blood pressure tablets dosage. Having to go back four weeks later to check if everything was as it should be. The nurse said my BP was even higher and I needed to make an appointment at the reception to see a GP. When I went to the desk, I get "oh, ok, it will be a phone appointment, a Doctor will ring you tomorrow between 9 and 5." I said it's not acceptable and that's not an appointment, to which I'm told, " so, you will have to ring up at 8am and take your chances". I haven't bothered!
On a side issue whilst talking to the second nurse, I casually enquired about my blood test results showing I had a low level of vitamin D. This was basically to enquire how low it was. She never answered that, just snapped back and said "your vitamin D level won't affect your blood pressure". Thought I'd check, The British Heart Foundation says the opposite! Since then I'm taking a vitamin D supplement, getting more sunshine, reduced my tablet dosage to the previous level (now taking half a tablet) and my BP is back down. Hells bells, who needs GPs anymore?
I would also love to read a convincing explanation for the current general malaise. Maybe it is a loss of meaning, making it impossible for anyone to define or explain ?
The real issue is that we are all obliged to pay taxes for a 'health' service that has become the complete opposite, with General Practitioners now just Glorified Pharmacists who possess no interest in holistic health.
Because of the COVID scamdemic, I have lost trust in all allopathic medicine and those who practice it. I look after my own health well enough and I shall never consent to being administered with any vaccine or what the NHS and/or its successor organisations consider to be a vaccine.
There are good doctors out there somewhere, in Australia there’s the AMPS , the problem is finding one who isn’t just pushing pills. I won’t personally be darkening a doctors door ever again, unless I’m dragged in unconscious.
Thankyou for sharing this letter. As a fellow frontline GP I concur. I had 2 consecutive consultations for patients with melanoma in 2021 who had both delayed presentation due to the pandemic. One because they were protecting the NHS, and the other because they had been worried about leaving the house. Both thankfully had good prognosis.
Psychiatric evaluations by phone are particularly unhelpful - it is possible for a paranoid, psychotic and frankly suicidal person to speak to a psychiatrist by phone and the doctor be none the wiser about how unwell they are. Much harder to mask such things face to face.
I reflected on the experience of remote consulting in the 'new normal' and some of the knock on effects for wider care here:
The mushrooming of remote single issue private assessment clinics for things like ADHD has been unexpected, but has been a boon for the pharmaceutical industry, and has had a knock-on impact on the NHS.
The GP who wrote the letter seems exceptional but unfortunately there are few of his ilk around. I can sense the decay in our NHS although there are small sporadic glimpses of what it once was, the doctors and nurses who still care and fight to maintain standards are facing an impossible task when trying to make the system work for their patients. It is all very sad, our health system itself is terminally sick and people will suffer but I can guarantee the senior managers and politicians have no worries about receiving first class health care, like in everything they will be able to afford private health care with their ill-gotten gains.
I echo the points of this GP. I do Ophthalmology in the community. I regularly lied during lockdown,claiming that the cases I saw were urgent,when mostly they were unhappy and alone.
Face to face was good for both me and the patients and I did catch a few things on the phone.
I was shocked at how many colleagues hid at home and went all Wordsworth as I wandered around a nearly empty building.
'I wandered,lonely as an f...ing cloud!'
My great uncle spent nearly a year as a doctor in Gallipoli. That was real frontline work, fetching wounded under fire.
I couldn't dishonour his memory over something as trivial as COVID.
I am still angry.
The system has morphed into something which serves only itself and not the patients or even the staff. Seeing physical people is not the point - filling out forms in triplicate is the point. This justifies all the admin layers.
I also have to wonder at the quality of some of the medical staff. My daughter got a face-to-face with her GP and was told she was anaemic and that anaemia is very common in people from West Africa. Which was a weird thing to say to a Caucasian.
She also went to the private wing of Guy's Hospital in London during all the lockdown nonsense for a minor operation. She said the NHS part of Guy's was absolutely filthy - she was shocked (quite an achievement). The private wing upstairs, on the other hand, was like a luxury hotel.
Two-tier system.
Stuffysays sounds about right does that, a friend of mine’s son qualified as an optician a couple of years ago and even in his placement training he showed outstanding knowledge and care.
He was sought out by a private clinic and offered a job to which he promptly turned down citing to them he wouldn’t be able to help the people on ground level that needed his level of expertise and he took a job with a local family run optician’s.
Rather than lose him that clinic offered him a position where he runs a private clinic once a month on his chosen days.
My friend when visiting him was shown round this clinic which had its own hospital attached so any surgery could be done there and then if any problems were found.
this is true. but on the other hand, if you have a 'real' doctor on the phone, you might be better off than if you have a pill a prick pusher face to face. The last doc I went to refused to treat my infected ear, but wanted to put me on 3 forever pills (I accepted the metformin and it almost killed me).. She saw me for about 3 minutes. Before that, I had talked to 2 different nurses for almost 2 hours.
Metformin is a mitochondrial poison.
(Complex 1 of respiratory chain iirc resulting in low NAD+ and a buildup of NADH. This is really bad news)
I concur! Back in 2022 I started to get pains in my stomach (I thought) so I phoned the GP and an anonymous doctor phoned me back and after a brief conversation ascertained that I had a problem with my stomach, based on the symptoms I gave him. How wrong can youy be! Two days later I was in hospital undergoing an angiogram and had a stent inserted. The NHS is a disgrace and it's down to successive govts, starving the NHS of resources as a prelude to its privatisation.
And yet, this is exactly the model the American left advocates for!
American left?
Yes, the “progressives”, liberals, and those on the right who are bought and paid for by Big Pharma. You’re correct, it’s not just the left, it’s on both sides of the political fence.
you and me have entirely different meaning for the term left.
William Bowles it’s not been starved it’s been purposely mismanaged and allowed to be misused so the public will accept the privatisation pill of healthcare.
For decades it’s been loaded up with layers and layers of useless management to make sure all those resources are sucked dry and nothing works. It might not have been have perfect before but all the managers have made it the most wasteful inefficient service it has become.
They could have made sure not a single person used it who wasn’t entitled by just issuing a no insurance no entry into the country, they could have insisted insurance documents were to be handed over with passports for inspection and it would have saved us taxpayers billions.
Agreed it's deliberate but the fact is, the NHS has been starved of resources, short 25,000 doctors, short 30,000 nurses, 50% of hospital beds cut. Since 2010, 4 million people have died through lack of treatment.
Funny how there was never one mention of hospital beds been cut by half during the scamdemic, politicians and media let their gobs shut about that one.
The doctors and nurse shortfall I can give an insight in.
We have family and friends who reported nearly 20yrs ago on what was happening on ground level.
My husband cousin is a surgeon within the NHS and qualified the same year as one my nephew’s school friends, both tell the same thing even though they don’t know each other.
Plenty of doctors and nurses were training and graduating to then be lucky to get a job. Both say exactly the same on how the NHS went out of its way to recruit from abroad knowingly filling positions just before graduation of all our home grown talent.
Back then we had plenty who trained to then find they couldn’t get a job because they’d been cuckoo’d out on purpose by our governments.
Those unable to get a job one of home grown allocated spots, my nephews friend been one of them ended up moving abroad.
All that taxpayers money wasted yet again training doctors and nurses who end up in the private sector elsewhere.
According to them and friends who witnessed the NHS flooded with substandard employees from abroad we had an abundance of talented staff coming through until they replaced them with plenty who are lacking.
Word got out and less people bothered to train as doctors and nurses so in effect they got exactly what they wanted in starving the Nhs of good quality competent home grown talent as an excuse for why we’re still short staffed even with those they’ve recruited and brought to work here.
I might add that recruiting doctors from abroad has three effects:
1. It saves us billions in education costs
2. Most of these doctors come from countries in the Global South, where they're trained at great cost
3. It deprives countries of doctors where they're needed most
The same goes for nurses. Isn't necolonialism wonderful.
It is an appalling situation.
My I point you to an excellent series of 5 articles (to date) by Dr Malcolm Kendrick entitled 'What's wrong with the NHS?'
The first is here: https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2023/10/09/what-is-wrong-with-the-nhs/
Dr Kendricks books look intriguing! I especially like the title of the first one shown “The Clot Thickens”! I’ll be checking out this doctor for sure. Thanks for the tip!
He's a no-nonsense GP who has been on the front line for many years and whose thoughts on such things as cholesterol, statins and heart disease are fascinating.
I just read reviews on his Cholesterol Con book, and see that his views reflect my own. No wonder he’s been maligned and targeted by the NHS/Big Pharma! He’s a rarity in the world we live in…a doctor with integrity willing to speak truth!
How depressingly true this is. Another problem with telephone appointments is the GP calling at a different time or even day rather than at the specified moment. In my case it led to me being in a situation where I was driving and with my impaired hearing could not hear properly or concentrate on what was being said. Even if not driving it can well be that you are put in a position where your privacy is compromised, on the whim of a GP not keeping to a timed appointment. Heaven forbid you fail to arrive on time at the surgery for your appointment. It works both ways!
I recently had an experience on my annual meds review, whereby the nurse increased my blood pressure tablets dosage. Having to go back four weeks later to check if everything was as it should be. The nurse said my BP was even higher and I needed to make an appointment at the reception to see a GP. When I went to the desk, I get "oh, ok, it will be a phone appointment, a Doctor will ring you tomorrow between 9 and 5." I said it's not acceptable and that's not an appointment, to which I'm told, " so, you will have to ring up at 8am and take your chances". I haven't bothered!
On a side issue whilst talking to the second nurse, I casually enquired about my blood test results showing I had a low level of vitamin D. This was basically to enquire how low it was. She never answered that, just snapped back and said "your vitamin D level won't affect your blood pressure". Thought I'd check, The British Heart Foundation says the opposite! Since then I'm taking a vitamin D supplement, getting more sunshine, reduced my tablet dosage to the previous level (now taking half a tablet) and my BP is back down. Hells bells, who needs GPs anymore?
I love this substack.
I would also love to read a convincing explanation for the current general malaise. Maybe it is a loss of meaning, making it impossible for anyone to define or explain ?
The real issue is that we are all obliged to pay taxes for a 'health' service that has become the complete opposite, with General Practitioners now just Glorified Pharmacists who possess no interest in holistic health.
https://warwickvegan.wordpress.com/2022/08/08/no-health-service/
Because of the COVID scamdemic, I have lost trust in all allopathic medicine and those who practice it. I look after my own health well enough and I shall never consent to being administered with any vaccine or what the NHS and/or its successor organisations consider to be a vaccine.
There are good doctors out there somewhere, in Australia there’s the AMPS , the problem is finding one who isn’t just pushing pills. I won’t personally be darkening a doctors door ever again, unless I’m dragged in unconscious.
Thankyou for sharing this letter. As a fellow frontline GP I concur. I had 2 consecutive consultations for patients with melanoma in 2021 who had both delayed presentation due to the pandemic. One because they were protecting the NHS, and the other because they had been worried about leaving the house. Both thankfully had good prognosis.
Psychiatric evaluations by phone are particularly unhelpful - it is possible for a paranoid, psychotic and frankly suicidal person to speak to a psychiatrist by phone and the doctor be none the wiser about how unwell they are. Much harder to mask such things face to face.
I reflected on the experience of remote consulting in the 'new normal' and some of the knock on effects for wider care here:
https://thegreatcrapestryofcovid.substack.com/p/13-the-new-normal?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2
The mushrooming of remote single issue private assessment clinics for things like ADHD has been unexpected, but has been a boon for the pharmaceutical industry, and has had a knock-on impact on the NHS.
The GP who wrote the letter seems exceptional but unfortunately there are few of his ilk around. I can sense the decay in our NHS although there are small sporadic glimpses of what it once was, the doctors and nurses who still care and fight to maintain standards are facing an impossible task when trying to make the system work for their patients. It is all very sad, our health system itself is terminally sick and people will suffer but I can guarantee the senior managers and politicians have no worries about receiving first class health care, like in everything they will be able to afford private health care with their ill-gotten gains.