OPINION
Healthcare in Hastings
The news is currently full of stories about food supply shortages – although I haven’t personally encountered that, perhaps because we tend to buy locally where there may be fewer shortages. Recently, though, we have experienced scarcity in another area: healthcare. In particular, my 90-year-old mother-in-law has yet again experienced an inconvenience faced by many, notably seeing
a GP.
She’d been feeling neglected for some time, finding it impossible to see a GP in person and having to make do with occasional phone calls – and sometimes waiting in vain for these. It was only after a trip to A&E on the advice of 111 that the local surgery kicked into action, putting her on different pills for her very high blood pressure.
However, like so much medication, this led to worrying side effects, particularly very red, swollen legs. After several phone calls and reassuring noises from the ‘health care professional’, she finally got an appointment at the surgery – for two weeks’ later. Of course, when the day arrived, this wasn’t with a doctor but with another ‘health care professional’; the doctor phoned back later that afternoon.
Then, by chance, I learned a bit more about the inner workings of general practice. Having obtained an appointment for myself (not with a GP, but again with one of the overworked nurses), I was standing in reception and overheard the person in front of me asking if they could see a particular doctor. They were told that this doctor was “working from home”. That in itself wasn’t so surprising, but the receptionist went on to say that “home” was in Portugal. No wonder GPs are becoming increasingly difficult to see these days.
It felt somewhat eerie in the almost deserted waiting room. It had an end-of-the-world feeling with one harassed receptionist appearing to deal with everything, including problems with the door locking system. And it was difficult to distinguish one ‘professional’ from another, as they all wore the same purple scrubs; so it was reassuring when a nurse emerged to take my blood pressure.
Talking to an assistant in a local chemist, I was told that the question “Where have all the GPs gone?” a constant refrain from customers. And according to my wife, who had asked while accompanying her mother to the surgery, all but one of the doctors were working from home – she didn’t venture to ask which countries they were in.
Then recently I saw a callout on Facebook for some medicine. It transpired that a local resident could no longer obtain medicine that he’d been taking for the past 25 years. He’d applied as usual via an app to Lloyds Pharmacy only to be told it was “not available”. And apparently it wasn’t available elsewhere. When I last spoke, he had managed to obtain supplies from two sources that would last seven weeks, but at the time nobody could advise him on what to do after that.
As he says: “If it’s happening to me, it must be happening to others.” So what is going on? – and do others in Hastings have similar tales to tell?
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