Make GP Bookings Accessible

After being flooded with stories of our members' GP appointment booking nightmares, our new campaign is pushing to make systems more accessible for people who stammer.

Earlier this year, a member told us they were struggling to make a GP appointment because of a stammering-unfriendly booking system.

We wondered if this was a one-off, so we surveyed our membership and asked for their experiences. The results show that lots of them are finding booking appointments with their doctor really difficult.

Between January and June 2023, over 300 members responded to our survey, and it uncovered disconcerting insights:

• Over two thirds of all respondents, 68%, reported they can only book a GP appointment using the phone. The telephone of course being a source of anxiety for many who stammer.
• 41% of people who stammer reported they find it 'very difficult' using the phone to book an appointment. This compares with 23% of people who don't stammer. 
• 54% of people who stammer experienced mental distress around using the phone to make appointments. 

People answering the survey reported they had been hung up on, misunderstood, rushed, laughed at, or simply not given enough time to explain their needs. This led some to delay making appointments or even avoid them altogether, which has impacted their health.

YOUR EXPERIENCES

Since sharing the survey results with our members last week, lots of you have emailed us with similar experiences at your local clinic:

"I just wanted to scream 'Why are you making it so hard for me?!"'

"Endless waiting in the phone queue and being cut off because I can't speak quick enough or the auto machine doesn't understand me. I've just given up trying now!"

"I have had a prescription for a controlled drug for the past 5 years. Every year I have to have a review and this year the pharmacist has added a note to my prescription saying 'speech was slow, CHECK BEFORE ISSUING'. I am now worried that I will lose access to my prescription."

In our 2023 poll of a representative sample of over 6,000 UK adults, 1.8% said they stammer. That's an average of 75 registered adult patients who stammer for each GP surgery!  

Download the full report of experiences of people who stammer when making a GP appointment below.

THIS NEEDS TO CHANGE

So, we are pushing for nationwide changes to GP appointment booking systems. GP surgeries need to review their systems and provide staff training around stammering and disfluency.

We need:

1. Flexible appointment booking channels so that people have the choice to call or use an alternative channel.
2. Training for receptionists so they can engage with disfluent callers. 
3. The implementation of opt-in patient record flags for people who stammer. This way, when someone phones up, the system automatically tells the receptionist that the caller stammers.

Download our 'Stammering & Patient Contact' guide below. It gives recommendations and tips for making the patient's journey accessible for people who stammer.

Share your experiences

You can tell us about your experiences with your GP surgery, good or bad. Whether it's a situation where you faced difficulties in booking an appointment, explaining your medical condition, getting a prescription — either in person or over the phone — we want to hear about it. It could be an incident that happened recently or years ago.  

Please share your experience via our Share Your Story form. It'll take just two minutes of your time.

We want to stress that this is not an attack on the NHS, which is amazing and something to be proud of and celebrated. However, healthcare is a basic right that everyone should have access to, and our surveys found that's currently not the case.

Updated 20th Sept 2023