Murbling about GPs

[kaberett]

I have poked around for more potential GPs. Here are some of my options.

• North End Road Medical Centre, with evening and (restricted) Saturday opening times
  
• Fulham Centre for Health, with evening and full weekend opening times, and a GP with a clinical interest in depression (who is currently undertaking a research Master's at Imperial, which may or may not be a conflict of interest)
  
• Brook Green Medical Centre, with evening and (restricted) Saturday opening, and multiple GPs with special interest in family planning
  
• Kensington Park Medical Centre, much more restricted opening hours, with a GP with special interests in both mental health and "women's health"
  
• Abingdon Medical Practice has extended Saturday opening hours and several GPs with interests in gynaecology or mental health; one with interests in gynaecology and mental health. I'm a bit twitchy about the fact that the person I am presuming is head-of-practice has a special interest in homeopathic medicine

Okay, so that means I am most interested in Kensington Park and Abingdon, even though those are the two that are slightly more inconveniently located; people with experience of dealing with both gynae and MH issues are more likely to cope well with me. I wish there was a way for me to find out in advance how antsy they're going to be about me being a complex patient. I also really wish I could find out whether they were going to be shit about trans stuff. But I suppose at least I have the CHX referral at this point... :-/

Thoughts welcome!

Comments

[kaberett]

Eeexcept I don't live in catchment for the Abingdon surgery. Damn.

Unclear whether I am in catchment for Kensington.

[pretty_panther]

Well, given the two you yourself like, I would say Abingdon has an advantage in that it has Saturdays. I would not personally worry about the homeopathic doc as you don't need to see them and from my experience doctors within the same practice can be very different and sometimes admit to disagreeing with one another. Interest in gynecology seems a huge plus given how odd docs can be to admit endometriosis is a seriously painful and very real thing.

[quirkytizzy]

The trans thing sounds like it'd be really important. Is there like a trans sorta approved list of doctors in your area, like on a website or something somewhere???

[ceb]

NB that a GP also doing research will probably be available at the surgery on fewer days.

[kaberett]

Yep, but this doesn't matter much to me provided the practice as a whole has sensible prescribing policies UNLIKE THE CURRENT PLACE.

[(Anonymous)]

Have you done any digging to see if the prescribing policies are practice, or if they are PCT? If they are PCT, unless you are on a boundary and can go to a practice in another PCT moving practices may not solve anything in that respect.

[liv]

I don't know if you're the same anon that keeps repeatedly giving kaberett factually incorrect advice. But in any case, PCTs were abolished by the 2012 Health and Social Care Act, so this distinction is completely meaningless.

[(Anonymous)]

Clinical Commissioning Group then - my GPs surgery certainly seems to have some hangover stuff from PCTs (which only finally went out a bit over a year ago), wouldn't be surprising if it were the same in other places.

Key question seems to be is this a practice wide policy or just the policy of the named GP and as that seems to be the important thing it seems like the first question to ask of other practices.

I've done the arriving from a different area (or even abroad), finding it difficult to get to the GPs surgery because of disabilities and a new GP not being comfortable instantly putting stuff on repeat prescription and it's frustrating and annoying and kaberett has my every sympathy in this frustration, whilst I understood it for the first three months or so, it does now seem to have dragged on too long.