Real Life

Melissa Kite

11 April 2009

Confused of Balham

‘Well, you shouldn’t have come in. I haven’t beeped yet.’

‘Sorry?’

‘You need to wait till I beep.’

I had come so close. And yet the prize of healthcare free at the point of delivery was about to be snatched from me as it dangled before my eyes. At that point I would have done anything to satiate the doctor’s desire for beepage. So I said, ‘Would you like me to go back out so you can beep, then I’ll come back in?’ He looked at me with disappointment of epic proportions. ‘It’s too late now. What do you want?’

I explained. He looked in my ear and harrumphed. ‘It’s infected. Take these.’ And he thrust a prescription for strong antibiotics at me — the good ones, the ones I usually have to go to Eaton Place to get hold of.

I felt deep gratitude as I scurried off, but also dreadful confusion. My experience either means the system is brilliant or terrible. I just can’t decide which.

Melissa Kite is deputy political editor of the Sunday Telegraph.

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Jac S

April 10th, 2009 4:58pm Report this comment

Tooting Walk-in Centre. What a familiar story. You were lucky he gave you a prescription. Normally, people queue purely out of desperation to be sent away and told to wait until their GP can see them. Its truly awful. I've been sent there by my GP to be told I was just imagining that I had a serious ear infection and to take paracetamol. I too, ended up in SW1 paying £200 for those much-needed eardrops. Too depressing for words.

ian skidmore

April 11th, 2009 4:58pm Report this comment

I am currently being attended by District Nurses twice a day having survived an operation for cancer by a brilliant surgeon; a cancer which was detected earlier by a GP I had no difficulty in seeing. Don't knock the NHS move to the Fens which have the best record for cleanliness in their hospitals in the whole of the UK,

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