Making the most of your GP appointment
GP appointments in the UK are the shortest in Europe, so we tried to find out how people can maximise the benefit of time spent with their GP. Read more about what local people told us.
What we did
Local GPs have been discussing the people that come to see them and the complaints they have. Overall, they felt that around a quarter of their consultations could have been handled by other health professionals.
So, we wanted to ask local residents for their suggestions on how time with our GP could be better managed and who else we might speak to about our health needs.
Key themes:
- There should be promotion of other healthcare services other than the GP and signposting to those services.
- Some felt that signposting should be done at the GP surgery and others didn’t. Furthermore, that having the receptionist provide the signposting wasn’t the best as they don’t have the appropriate training. Confidentially would be an issue also.
- Regarding the promotion of other services, people thought that the pharmacist should help with that. Additionally using more varied avenues like newsletters, social media, websites and the like to get the information out would help.
40 people responded to our survey and we had some really useful suggestions. We shared these suggestions with the NHS Primary Care Clinical Group and others who we think will benefit from the information.
Downloads
To find out more about what people told us, download the report.
GP Consultation report
If you need this report in a different format, please email
