Ashdown Forest Health Centre 2015-12-14 Person 2 5 0

When I need an appointment I feel I am an inconvenient nuisance due to the floundering of the practice under the weight of patients wanting to see a doctor. Often getting a seat in the waiting room isn't easy and you must be prepared for a long wait beyond your appointment time. Not every illness or problem is singular in its components. Unfortunately the latest approach seems to be not to look holistically at what may be wrong but to announce that you have ten minutes and that not all your symptoms can be discussed in one go. It feels like having five broken fingers but needing to make separate appointments for each. This attitude must make diagnosis almost impossible. I would suggest that for some part of the day, appointments are done on a numbered ticketing system, allowing you to attend without an appointment and, providing you are prepared to wait, ultimately being seen. Perhaps having a set time for the over 65s and other times for children under five and for those who need a quick, or a double appointment would assist. As it is many patients feel they are being chivvied out before they are sure the doctor really understands their problems. I am slightly deaf, and this makes seeing a doctor with a foreign accent stressful. Ideally I would always see Drs Miller or Basley but would probably die of old age before this could be achieved on the day requested. The system of phoning in early morning is horrible. I have tried ringing sometimes for up to 40 minutes to get through and then being told there are no appointments. I often see a doctor I don't know, who has no connection with me and my medical history, just to be seen at all. The younger doctors can make me feel as if I was the most boring person they have ever met and with problems that are of absolutely no interest whatsoever. This may well be the case but one then questions whether they are in the right vocation! I went to my car and cried after one such consultation. I feel that the surgery needs to have evening appointments at least two days a week and also every Saturday morning, with Saturday afternoons twice a month to cope with the number of patients. Not all patients can be whisked through in ten minutes and appointment times need to be variable and judged more compassionately and accurately. Perhaps initial appointments for a problem should be allowed a longer time than follow ups. Perhaps doctors could be allocated different age groups in which they might have interest or experience rather than a mishmash each and then the appointment times could be decided upon at the doctor's discretion. Maybe a second premises, or a larger one, or greater use of the space in the surgery could be utilised with more senior practitioners. The car parking is patently dangerous and insufficient for the volume of patients and you dice with death walking from the pavement to the surgery door. Getting old isn't fun and being unwell when you live alone is frightening. I can see the surgery is struggling and doctors and receptionists are tired and I have not intended to sound unkind, merely to tell it as I perceive it. I feel that a huge revision of the running of the surgery needs to take place as a matter of urgency.