Why next time I will do better standing up for my GP at the pub – or anywhere else
I will not be alone in valuing a walk with a friend or a girls’ night out as part of the reason I am surviving motherhood, marriage and life in general. Women naturally and reliably provide this safety net for each other. If men were half as good, perhaps male suicide statistics would be less grim. According to the ONS, 115 people die by suicide in the UK every week – with 75% of those deaths being male.
For women, I have no doubt that female friendship helps both humour and sanity. However, on a recent trip to the pub with 2 of my closest friends, I found that female harmony was suddenly interrupted as they let rip on our local GP.
To set the scene, we live in a leafy suburban area, but our GP practice is subject to the same NHS pressures – not enough appointments, bureaucracy and governance overload and spiralling costs.
Both had seen our female GP that week – miraculous in itself. One for a specialist referral, and the other for advice about her daughter. Both were dissatisfied with the outcome of their appointments, but also felt annoyed enough to offload angrily, saying they felt entitled to far better service.
I listened first and then protested, ‘GPs must ask difficult questions, they can’t refer everyone. They are trained to deal with a lot of issues, especially if you consider that common things happen commonly.’
This did not go down well. ‘But the GP was rude,’ they added.
I protested more, ‘They only have 10-minute slots, so there is a lot of time pressure. And maybe she was just having a rough day!’
This toing and froing went on for a few minutes, and I didn’t win them over. Medical matters are emotive for obvious reasons.
‘Put yourself in her shoes,’ was my weak, but final retort.
‘WelI we can’t speak to people dismissively and rudely in our jobs, so why should she?’ was theirs.
I did not do well enough that evening standing up for my female GP and I have regretted it.
Her job isn’t like your job, or anyone’s job.
10-minute appointments, back-to-back, for hours on end, weeks on end, years on end.
An eternity of listening, caring and diagnosing. Not knowing when you might get it wrong, when a patient might turn on you, when you might need the assistance of your medical indemnifier just to keep doing your job.
A GP would have to be a robot to get every appointment spot on for each patient. And perhaps one day there will be a place and a justification for AI here.
Until then, the odd ‘compassion fatigue’ appointment is surely understandable.
And at this point I should disclose – I am married to a medic.
With my own insight, from my shoes.
The role of female GP used to promise a reasonably balanced medical life, where women could combine skilled, valuable, satisfying, well-paid work alongside family life. Those days seem over.
GP practice is not what it was. Partnership is no longer the desirable or profitable route for ambitious GPs and instead these doctors are often downtrodden and depressed by the state of primary care. Or leaving the country or the profession.
These days, it’s rare to hear positive feedback from any area of NHS medicine. Consider the plight of one junior doctor and specialty trainee. She recently competed with over 1000 applicants for a senior training post, made it down to the last 4 and wasn’t selected. It gets worse, she must now tread water in her locum job, on a pitiful wage (relative to skill and knowledge) for another year until she can apply again, whilst the only training post open to her was in the North East, when she has made a life for the last 5 years on the South Coast. Oh, and she was a junior doctor in 2020 just as the pandemic hit.
Then there is the highly stressful medical school application process. This requires A Level students to jump through additional exams before even being allowed the opportunity to begin UCAS medical school applications. I shudder as I think of these fresh-faced teens with the medicine mountain climb ahead of them.
To be clear, I am acutely aware that it takes a certain kind of person to become a doctor. In 2017, a lovely doctor friend set up a movement called, ‘Permitted to Pause’ encouraging doctors, nurses and healthcare workers to find and share ways of maintaining balance in their caring profession. Being married to a doctor, her words sting me sometimes,
‘Because it’s hard taking, when you’re devoted to giving.’
From the moment the Hippocratic Oath is taken, the white coat is more a metaphorical second skin. Over 2 decades, I have witnessed medical queries flow into my husband from parents, siblings, children, neighbours and school mums and dads. There have also been the good Samaritan deeds on planes, sports fields and on one occasion, lifesaving CPR at the side of a squash court. The words ‘can you just have a look at this’ are beyond number and must at times seem relentless.
It was ever thus, my grandfather, was an army trained medic, who spent many years practising as a GP in southern Africa in the 40s, 50s and 60s. It was very much an any time, anything, anywhere role. He would go from clinic to hospital and into the African bush to care for patients. He delivered babies and performed minor surgeries, often leaving my grandmother at home, at very short notice with 4 small children, tearing her hair out.
Today, in this country, we have a charity called ‘Doctors in Distress’, which on 17th September 2024 held the first ever National Suicide Memorial Day for healthcare workers. Founded by the brother of a cardiologist who took his own life, the charity discloses the horrific statistics, that ‘according to the ONS, 2500 healthcare workers have died by suicide since 2011. That’s 4 healthcare workers every week.’
Doctors in Distress was the chosen charity for the 2024 Royal College of GPs conference in June, and in Lord Darzi’s report on 19th September 2024, it was highlighted that ‘a recent survey of NHS staff showed that 41.7% felt unwell as a result of work-related stress.’
So, for all these reasons and many more, I will always stand up for my GP at the pub or anywhere else.
3 – Doctors-in-distress.org.uk