How often do you visit the GP?

How often do you visit your doctor? I think people in other countries have annual medical exams with their GP, but in UK we tend to only visit them when we're about to die, why is that?

I last visited my GP about 2.5 years ago when I'd crashed my bike. She said my hand was bruised. I went to the hospital and had an x-ray, and it was broken.

The time before that I was 15 and had a house call. The GP said I was constipated and gave me some stuff to make me poo. A couple of weeks later I had my burst appendix removed.

So why do British people not visit their doc more often?

Why?

Because as your experiences go to show, the local GP has nooooo idea about injury or illness.

Also, I dont get sick - I only ever rupture knee ligaments. I must be due to rupture more soon

i go to get antibiotics for my horrible skin (although i take far fewer than i'm prescribed) - i'm meant to see the doc for these about twice a year but it's more like once every two years (i eat blue cheese instead). i put off going for my girlie checks, which i know is stupid, but i'm up to date at the moment. last time i had a smear, the nurse asked me some general helath questions, plus weighed me, did blood pressure etc. When the fat cow told me i drank too much (which i know i do, but it's my only vice) i got a bit cross. because she was really very fat. and i'm not. haha, haha!

i would really like a general check up because my mum had a heart attack when she was 46, then a ruptured aortic aneurysm 7 years later (which she survived). but they don't really seem interested. maybe i should get FAT and then they'll care....?

jane

I've had enough of hospitals, docs and district nurses to last a lifetime between Sept 8th and October 20th last year.

Even then I was on the point of dying before I went to A&E. They did a good job of ignoring me and finding the real symptoms.

Previous trips to A&E had been when I was losing blood from cycling inflicted wounds (one as the result of a Renault Clio with a silly bitch at the wheel, the other from heading over the handlebars). The one where I cut my top lip was 4hrs, a tetanus jab and kicked out, the handlebar job was less waiting, then six stitches (I was leaking a bit faster for that one).

Can't fault the care I got at the NHH A&E on all three occasions.

It was the morphine (maybe) and/or penicillin (most likely) after the hacking chunks out of my arse surgery that nearly did for me.

The vacuum pump saga is the story for dinner parties.

General Practitioner....= No Specific sKill & practicing till they get it right

KevP wrote:General Practitioner....= No Specific sKill & practicing till they get it right

It's not for want of training. My young'un spent five years on a medical degree and is currently coming to the end of two years rotations in hospitals and GP practices. She hopes to get on to the three year GP programme that starts in the Autumn. Ten years training altogether before she can call herself a GP.

Regards,

Joe

Put it this way .... without a couple of hernias a year or so ago I would be a long way behind in getting any value from the years of medical insurance we have paid. Having said that as we get older as a family it seems to have paid off more, not so much with the GP but the specialist or surgeon. The GP is often only used to get a referral.

Generally tho the Doctors is just somewhere I walk past on the way to the library near by

george

Recently - not often, just the odd sinus infection every few years.

Previously - bleedin' loads.

The last time was three years for a complete checkup.

Hennie