Managed to dodge the rain for long enough to get a walk up to Pepper's Green Lane and check on Gigaclear's progress laying cable for our ultrafast broadband. I reckon they'll be coming past the house later today. Maybe, by the time we can actually get 900mbps service (a month or two to go yet, I think), our GP surgery and Springfield will have got around to organising video consultations. Not as good as face-to-face but got to be better than 'phone only. The rest of the world has happily embraced Zoom, not to mention FaceTime and etc., so why can't the medical world do the same? As things stand, I can't even email my GP. Ridiculous!
I've just checked the practice website. We have five partner doctors, working a total of 16 days a week between them, plus a salaried GP (not sure how many days he works), and:
six practice nurses,
one practice manager,
eleven additional staff (receptionists, secretaries, pharmacists, etc.)
Making a total of three "support" staff for each (part-time) doctor. Some of those of course are part-time.
I have no idea how typical of a modern GP practice this is, or of how much support a GP needs for each patient/appointment - but it just feels a little unbalanced.
Video consultations are coming fast.... I've just had a totally successful video review in the hospital diabetic clinic. But for many OPD and GP consults a video is just not adequate; one needs a lot more information than only examining the patient can supply. My diagnostic capability would have been grossly impaired by lacking the very important information that comes from examination of the patient. This particularly applies to swellings in every speciality and even for skin rashest where there is a lot more information in the 3D than in flat images. The main place of video consults is in review though even then in certain circumstances not all. In all clinical medicine examination is still VERY important - it cannot all be done by scans, blood tests etc... and talking. Fixrheumatix
ReplyDeleteMy local practice has a similar number of doctors and other staff to yours, although it is owned by one of the GPs, all of whom are Asian Australians. A physiotherapist, an audiologist and other specialists are available one or two days a week. There are two pharmacies within a block of the practice.
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