Share review of Broadstairs Medical Practice

Broadstairs Medical Practice 2024-08-01 Person 1 5 0

Called the surgery to make an appointment with a doctor. Receptionist asked what for? I explained I had been experiencing increasingly worse pain in my lower back area for months and now was affecting mobility and sleep. She said I'll make you an apt. with a physio, however, I wanted to talk to a doctor and not sure what was causing the pain - could be something internal and more serious than muscular. The receptionist said if it's not muscular then the physio will refer you to the doctor ... I said I would prefer to just go to the doctor directly and they can refer me to a physio. Then I was told the nearest appointment was nearly 4 weeks away! When I reminded her I was in pain she said - go to accident & emergency. My symptoms are neither accident or emergency. So she then says - I'll have a word with the doctor for you and they will decide if they need to see you. A few hours later I receive a text from the surgery with links to back pain pages on the internet plus advising me I should consider taking a drug called "Amitriptyline" which is for nerve impingement. I wrote to the practice manager using the email address on their website, explaining my experience including the unhelpful text message. No response to either email. In summary - clinically diagnosed by a receptionist, sent a pointless text with uninformed advice from the surgery admin team, ignored by practice manager.

While receptionists do have a triage role, they should not be diagnosing or making clinical assumptions about patients - this is overreach.