"GP Service run for the benefit of the Staff and not the Patients!"

I have used my current GP for 15 years. We live in a small rural community (the Cowal) but I work in Glasgow.

My GP's practice is a 50 minute round trip from where I live and is in the opposite direction to anywhere else I travel to - it literally leads to nowhere! I am not allowed to use any other GP in the area other than an equally inaccessible one!

I have had problems with my GP's dispensing staff for some time - I used to be able to pick up my repeats on the weekend but that was stopped as, I understand, it was "causing problems for the staff"! Then a few years ago they stopped anyone ordering repeat prescriptions in advance of the due date due to claims people were stockpiling! As I have to make special arrangements to travel to this place and cannot always get permission from work to take time off just to collect repeat medicines I have ended up several times over the years going without asthma and pain relief medicines for several days at a time.

When the new GPs started I thought that maybe things would improve, but no - now although I am promised I can have 2 months of medicine at a time to save me travelling up every month they still manage to get it wrong more times than right and I end up yet again going without medication.

I would like to think that at some point before I pass away (which sometimes I am thinking their staff hope would be sooner rather than later) that they would understand that we, as patients, are paying for a National Health Service but it would appear to me that in the past 15 years, we have seen no change and I feel this is unlikely to happen in the foreseeable future (or my lifetime). The staff at my surgery seem to me to think that the practice is set up for their benefit and as far as accommodating the different needs of patients there seems to be a one size fits all approach and if you don't fit then tough luck.

In areas such as mine, why can't we have the same set up as in England where you can register with a doctor which is convenient for you, such as near where you work? Those lucky people are able to get this as of October this year whereas I am stuck with 2 equally inaccessible doctors surgeries and facing a Russian roulette situation each month as to whether my lungs will hold out til the next lot of asthma medicine I am able to get. I am fearful I may have to visit A and E at times when I am without my medicine.