Pharmacists are good for small stuff but Sunak’s plans hide the real problem

WHEN I first joined my GP surgery, it was in a terraced house up the road where I could walk in and get a same-day appointment.

Then, in the name of “progress”, it relocated to a larger, purpose-built premises, rebranded itself as a community hub and offered a mix of regular GPs and locums as well as on-site physio and yoga sessions.

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Fair enough and, for many years, it worked well.

But since Covid, it has descended in to a shambolic, mismanaged mess where getting to see a doctor is tantamount to getting an audience with the Pope.

You can no longer walk in and book an appointment, you can’t phone to make one and, as of last week, you can no longer email the surgery either.

Everything has to be done via an “online booking system” which the majority of its elderly patients find impossible to navigate.

So the last time I darkened its door (to chase a form I had dropped off three weeks earlier for signing, only to discover they’d lost it) I was appalled to witness an elderly lady having to shout her symptoms to a receptionist through a thick plastic “Covid screen”.

If the World Health Organisation has declared that “Covid-19 is no longer a public health emergency of international concern”, then why the hell are so many UK organisations still acting as though we’re in the grip of it? But I digress.

After being robotically told to use the “online booking system” and replying that she didn’t have a computer, the receptionist suggested she ask her family to help her.

Assuming, of course, that she has one.

God forbid that the surgery of her “family doctor” might treat her as a human being.

So, while PM Rishi Sunak’s plans to free up around 15million GP appointments by sending those with “common ailments” to their local pharmacy is a good idea, it’s worth pointing out that those of us registered with poorly managed surgeries have been doing that for some time.

My excellent local pharmacy is always full of people asking advice because they can’t get to see their GP, and when my left eye recently decided that Halloween had come early and turned red, I didn’t even bother trying to see a doctor.

Instead, I headed straight to my local branch of Bayfields Opticians where, despite not having an appointment, the woman on duty kindly inspected my eye, took photos, consulted an ophthalmologist and called me later that day to confirm that it was a subconjunctival haemorrhage and nothing to worry about.

Others, God forbid, consult “Dr Google” for their various ailments where, if you look in the wrong place, all manner of quack remedies are suggested.

So, yes, going to a pharmacist for a prescription will be better than that.

Fraught with issues

 But what if your “common ailment” is actually an indication of something far more serious?

Are pharmacists trained to spot that?

And are they covered for any legal consequences if they get it wrong? Particularly when it comes to urinary tract infections.

It’s potentially fraught with issues and, to my mind, circumnavigates the real issue that we have too few NHS GPs to cope with our rising population and that many surgeries (like mine) are woefully mismanaged and are still using the pandemic as a reason to treat patients as an inconvenience.

By contrast, the surgery my elderly mother is registered with is superbly run. It can be done.

So by all means, farm out the “common ailments” to pharmacists as a temporary measure, but if the Government fails to tackle mismanaged surgeries, this latest initiative will prove to be a sticking plaster that soon comes unstuck.

I don’t think Peter’s the only fella still desiring you, Abbey

MODEL Abbey Clancy says she used to blow-dry her hair in the nude but had to stop because it made hubby Peter Crouch frisky.

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So now she wears a dressing gown double-tied at the back to try and thwart his advances.

“Any other time is fine, but not when I’m getting ready,” says the 37-year-old mum of four.

“But it’s nice to know that you’re still desirable to your husband after 16 years.”

As well as, one imagines, being lusted after by everyone else’s.

An own goal by Ball

ZOE BALL has been reminiscing about her younger years when she “fell in love with a Greek boy” on holiday and “rode on the back of his moped”.

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Uh-oh, careful Zoe. Reminiscing about the things you did in your youth is fine among discreet old friends.

 But saying it on a podcast means it’s out there for ever.

Consequently, when your now 13-year-old daughter reaches the age that she goes on holiday with her mates and you sit her down for dos and don’ts chat – including “NEVER get on the back of someone’s moped” – she will turn round and say: “But Mum, you did.”

Easy as Pi for Daniel

DANIEL TAMMET is often referred to as the world’s greatest mental athlete.

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Now he’s supporting a call for other “super memorisers” to take part in an academic study at Cambridge University that will assess whether those who can retain a lot of information have a different brain structure to those who can’t.

Daniel, 44, who was born in Barking, East London, but now lives in Paris, speaks 11 languages and learned Icelandic in a week. As you do.

In 2004, he was celebrated for setting a European record for Pi memorisation when he . . . takes deep breath  . . .  recited the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter to an astonishing 22,514 digits in five hours and nine minutes.

Which, considering I’d already forgotten this sentence the second I finished typing it, means he can count me out.

Sam’s glory story

ANY parents will know the feeling of nearly dying with pride as you watch your offspring play Mary, Joseph, the donkey or even “third tree from the left” in the school nativity.

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So one can only imagine the chest-swelling joy of 14-year-old Samuel Strachan’s parents as he stood boldly in front of the new King in Westminster Abbey and uttered the first words of the Coronation.

“Your Majesty, as children of the kingdom of God, we welcome you in the name of the King of Kings,” he said faultlessly before King Charles then replied.

Samuel, as a story to tell your future grandchildren, it takes some beating.

PRINCE GEORGE persuaded his grandfather to drop the tradition of pages wearing white knee breeches and let them wear trousers instead.

Hardly surprising. Returning to the school playground when you’ve played such a pivotal role in the King’s Coronation must be bad enough.

But if you’d done it in knickerbockers and tights, you’d never hear the end of it.

Major crush

ONLINE activity suggests that King Charles’s handsome equerry Major Jonathan Thompson set many a female heart aflutter as he walked into the abbey.

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We like a man in uniform, don’t we? Though we draw the line at traffic wardens.

THE ample-chested Lord President of the Council Penny Mordaunt once said: “I could probably hold Her Majesty’s Stationery Office under my bosoms.”

Not to mention, perhaps, that sword of state she held so stoically for so long.

GOOGLE’S chief AI scientist Jeff Dean says: “We remain committed to a responsible approach to AI.”

Yes, but it’s the technology being in the hands of the irresponsible we’re rightly worried about.

RESEARCHERS from Oxford University reveal: “Our study suggests favourable environmental conditions, such as sunny weather, induce positive emotional states in listeners which, in turn, lead them to choose energetic and positive music.” Next week, bears s**t in the woods.