It’s monday morning 11am You’ve scheduled time out of your day to go to your GP because you need a blood test Why? Because without your blood test, you will not be prescribed your routine medication, and without it, you die
So, you go all the way to your GP You enter Head to the counter It’s a bit busy but you are seen by the secretaries
What’s your query? I’m here to pickup a bloodform >what was that? I’m here to pickup a bloodform >Date of birth >Name She prints This is it
NO.
It’s the bloodform from July It is November You tell her you ordered a more recent one with specific bloods requested She checks the system She takes a long time She tells you the gp called but you didn’t answer You tell her, in fact, the call scheduled on the 14th didn’t happen The gp called on the 13th, while you were away from the phone, because you were peeing inside the toilet inside your home The gp didn’t call back, nor was there any way for you to call back the gp The gp set a date to call you, called on a different day, then decided she wouldnt call on the day you both scheduled
as this happens, the gp practice swarms with 4 5 6 new patients as this happens, the elderly lady next to you, ms mahendra, already well into her situation, is Snapped at by the secretary
her right eye half into the screen, her left sneering at the elderly woman in conversation
like talking to a retard, she speaks slowly
“LIKE I said to you already, you NEED to FAST for this blood test, since it tests lipids, and since you’ve EATEN ALREADY today, you must comeback FIRST THING tomorrow morning when you have DONE your FAST”
ms mahendra pauses
if she dropped dead, secretary’d laugh hysterically, let out a SNIGGER - that’s one less stupid patient to consider
mahendra takes time to compose herself i’m in awe; i hold my breath
her kshatriya ancestors hold her back from stuffing the lady’s crusty twat with a dreidel and 2 aids needles - but we’d rather a speculum rip that cunt wide open And in her most received of pronunciations states that “That, I know - but that is not what I’m enquiring about. What I’m enquiring about is a different appointment, one on the 15th” ms mahendra says that she’s been using the nhs app to deal with her appointments many times before, but since recently, she’s had to come in because the gp secretaries don’t receive her enquiries
desperately
she pleads.
what is the correct procedure for my appointments the nhs app, email, the phone? nasty secretary insists that “YOU can use the NHS app, OR email, OR Phone.”
ms mahendra held her breath within her body ms mahendra received help from nobody
Unhurried Secretary >The pharmacist said you haven’t ordered any medication since 2023
Of course you haven’t. You don’t ever order your medication via the gp.
The gp is simply meant to be printing a repeat bloodform that you’ve used again and again for more than 1 year now The gp and the secretaries dont need to schedule an appointment for this The gp secretaries forced you to schedule an appointment to obtain a repeat bloodform for a repeat prescription, took 3 days to respond, and 1 week to give you a 2 minute phone call appointment, with the gp, so she can click some buttons to provide you a bloodform
personally, in the past, whenever you needed a repeat prescription, you could use accurx to message the gp, and she would reply rapidly to your simple queries
but in the months since, all semblance of order, an nhs app that isn’t weird, and functioning systems that contain patient information, seem to all have disappeared instead, we’ve 4 secretaries running around and 1 intern, young, about 21, confused why her grandmother roped her into rejecting pensioner medication this morning Another body added to the problem not fixing it
However, you’re here today, not at the hospital, because you knew the gp, in combination with the secretaries at her practice, would NOT have properly processed your bloodform request and you had to make sure because you would have wasted another hour waiting in line at the hospital for a bloodtest you couldn’t even do because they didn’t have the BLOODFORM
still at the front desk of the gp practice, you ask her “who works in your IT department? how can I speak to your IT department?”
distracted by the emails of patients begging for treatment nasty secretary slowly types out the same email for the 16th time that morning “If you think it’s urgent enough to see the doctor, you’ll need to call the surgery at 8am sharp. Otherwise, call 111.”
she asks “why do you need to speak to the IT department?” “i can’t let you speak to the IT department”
you insist “im a software developer i can help if you put me in contact with the IT department, i can make things a lot easier for you”
>help? WHAT for?
help for a lot of things. the old lady, the nhs app, the website, my prescriptions, everyone having the same problems. confusion.
>no, we dont need help
Are you sure?
>why would we need help?
“because… You’re struggling”
she’s irritated now because she’s not solved any of the problems of the last 2 patients, and 6 more wait. they go home, not because they’ve been seen, but because they’ve given up she has to keep answering calls and enquiries where she instructs them to send an email, use the nhs app, or phone before 8am the self-check in portal doesn’t work, and hasn’t since precovid >that’s 2019 and the new 21 year old intern is fielding questions she has none of the answers to
There’s 4 people in here. When you email, they don’t answer. You can call. but if u call, it’s busy, can’t get anything before 8am. But u can’t book anything after 8am. Show up in person, and they don’t have access to the information. You get fought with in the gp surgery. You’re wrong; you don’t know your health history.
So, it’s another hard day in the gp surgery
“YOU’VE been served; YOU can Leave now”
you hadn’t been served the other secretary told you you hadn’t ordered a prescription since 2023 which is what the pharmacist told her but if she’d seen any of the gp’s notes or documents, she’d know you get your bloodforms here, so you can get them done at the local hospital the local hospital automatically sends them back to the gp, and the gp forwards them to the main hospital that actually handles your medicine through a private company that delivers your medication every month
before this, you used to get 2 blood tests for the exact same thing at both the local and the main hospital, because if you refused, or begged them to send it to the right hospital
well, if dead is now, you’d be long with it you exhale
as you leave, you wish one of the old women in line goodluck
shes says >thank you
you wonder who will save these poor people but you
> LATER
> YOU find the NHS app it has a web app nice never used it before finally it seems here you can message the gp directly
>the web app timed out because you spent too long ruminating on the most pleasant way to insist in also getting contact details to the IT department in addition to your bloodform prescription >the web app won’t log you in again; it insists something went wrong “Please go to the website, or app, you are trying to use and log in”
>you keep trying
the weird web app only allows 450 characters, then fights you, deleting the characters when you type, with a 500 millisecond lag that accompanies a complete shutdown of your keyboard and all website functionality. in fact, all text sporadically disappears and glitches like the webapp is somehow using all 24 cores of your cpu, and a web worker to perform warm tongue strokes on the interior of amanda pritchard’s vagina which wouldn’t be the first time you found yourself exploring the soft pink inner ridges of a infertile breeding ground
a lot to prove a fair point
> you finally send the message after waiting, retrying, retrying, retrying, signing in again, retrying, and typing your message again
It’s now Tuesday, a full week after that ordeal You realise that the secretaries must have intercepted your message and blacklisted you from receiving treatment, because you politely offered to, with no charge, take a look at all the ways to reduce confusion, stress, and sustained severe organisational duress at the gp practice.
that’s a scene in an english nhs