Tired, frustrated, confused - GPs are sharing their experiences of the days following Boris Johnson’s shock announcement that they would have to administer ‘20 million’ vaccines ‘in just two weeks’, amid unprecedented demand on the NHS.
Medics say they have been left wondering why they were not given time to prepare for the Prime Minister’s sudden declaration on Sunday evening, that the booster programme would be rolling out to all adults over 18.
Several GPs have told the Manchester Evening News of the crisis now unfolding within general practice, as staff scramble with 'no notice' to figure out how to achieve the 'mammoth ask' during the 'busiest time of year for GP surgeries'.
Some say they may be forced to cancel ‘all their routine work’ to achieve the ambitious target, while other say the goal feels ‘unachievable’ for a workforce that is ‘already working beyond capacity’.
Three GPs gave firsthand accounts of their days on the frontline, sharing a mood of exasperation as they work to figure out how to staff a colossal vaccination programme, while there is already unprecedented pressure on the NHS…
Dr Faisal Bhutta - a GP at Haughton Thornley Medical Centre, Tameside
We will likely have to cancel routine items - annual blood tests and chronic disease reviews, minor surgeries, joint injections, health checks, medication reviews.
Everything else we will try to carry on - especially acute and same-day care.
We've been told the the priority is vaccinations, do whatever you think is necessary to make it happen. What that means could vary from practice to practice. But all of that work will have to be done at some point, and by that time, there will be new work as well.
The last 24 hours has been a rollercoaster. We had a panic attack when we heard the Prime Minister was asking us to do.
We had an emergency meeting that evening, we looked at the challenge, how we were going to do it. We were not sure if we'd be able to do it or not.
By the end of today (Monday), we're a little more hopeful, we have a plan.
We've opened extra clinics, we're going to be open until 8pm in the evenings, we're also going to do the weekends as well.
We still have some gaps, we're hoping we'll be able to find vaccinators who can actually do the injections because you need to have people that are registered clinicians to oversee that.
There's a only so many of those registered paramedics, doctors, pharmacists and nurses.
But we're going to do our best. Hopefully some of that nursing time will be freed up by cancelling that routine work.
The worst bit of it is that we get to know from the media like everybody else. We could have been contacted and we would have had more time to plan, rather than hearing on the news and panicking about it.
That was very frustrating, it's not the first time we've heard things like this in the news before our own sources.
NHS staff were under huge pressure, even before the Omicron emergency. Patient started calling about boosters before we even had answers. It just put extra pressure on us.
We may well be vaccinating people on Christmas Day, if we fill the clinics and need more capacity.
This is going to be the most difficult three weeks of general practice - winter pressures, Covid symptoms, and now vaccinations.
I hope we'll get through it unscathed.
The best thing people can do for us is to come in anyway. If you need to have your booster, please come forward, that's the only protection for you and your family from Omicron and the long term consequences of long Covid.
Don't worry about how busy we are - we are working harder, working longer, to make it happen.
Dr Bob Mathewson - a GP at High Lane Medical Centre, Stockport
Omicron cases are on the rise. I’m not at all surprised. I think that’s probably the tip of the iceberg.
This will have a lot of implications, including for the booster rollout, as people have to isolate.
We are going to be asked to drop some of our routine work and dedicate more time to vaccinating, then pick up less urgent cases in January, but there may be other elements to this we don’t yet know about.
We think we’ll just about get there by the end of the month, but it is down to the goodwill of staff working weekends which they have done throughout October and November - on the promise that they wouldn’t be asked to work weekends near to Christmas.
And bang, Boris lands this on us. We’ll be working every weekend from now on.
Hopefully we will be able to close for Christmas knowing we have vaccinated everyone.
I know we’re all battle weary, but you just have to rise to the challenge. If we just do it now, we’ll be able to get back to the work we’ve not been able to do during the pandemic.
People have just started coming in with things they’ve been storing up, now more severe than they otherwise might have been, so we’ve got a sense of that underlying workload. And it’s only going to get even bigger.
One of my worries is that, if people think we’re not seeing people because of the vaccine programme, they’ll put off their medical concerns again. If people have issues, they should be coming and telling us - we are not cancelling all our services.
We're being set back again, and it feels like constant catch up.
But my biggest fear is if it turns out that the more virulent strain isn’t Omicron, and it’s Delta instead, the public will be less interested in having vaccines and that won’t be good long term.
We could need people to have another booster or vaccine next year, it can be a lot to ask of people and these are huge programmes to put into place.
The good news is that, today, we've been inundated with people booking their boosters.
As a profession, we do feel battered and bruised by what the government tells us, but we recognise it’s life and death. It’s an emergency, the final push.
Dr Siobhan Brennan - a GP partner at Stockport LMC
It’s Monday morning, 8.30...
The phones are turned on now in our GP practice.
And in light of Boris’ announcement, I suspect we’re going to have a very, very bad day at work.
The announcement yesterday evening that there is an expectation that GPs would provide, at least, 20 million vaccines in the next two weeks - because that’s really what it is including bank holidays - put the absolute fear in me, and certainly I expect many of my colleagues.
It feels unachievable.
We are already working way beyond capacity. People are burnt out.
There aren’t even vaccine supplies, at times, when we have decided we’ve wanted to vaccinate.
Where is all this extra manpower and reserves going to come from? Because general practice is broken.
I don’t really know what else to say.
It’s the end of the day…
It went slightly better than expected but I think that’s because several of us worked last night, immediately after the government announcement to get information out to our patients on the website and social media channels. Which we then updated constantly today in addition to doing all our routine work and all the urgent, on-the-day work.
I’m still confused, along with many of my colleagues, as to how this is going to play out because we’re being told to prioritise the vaccine delivery over non-urgent medical care that a GP would normally provide.
But everything that we deal with, most days, is seen as an emergency in some way, shape or form.
So I’m not quite sure how we’re going to do this.
I listened to a webinar this afternoon and I still feel really confused and very anxious about whether I’m going to have a day off at Christmas, which I’ve been looking forward to.
I’m worried for my colleagues, worried for our community if we all burn out as GPs.
Don't really know what else to say again… it’s not great.
In a letter to the Royal College of General Practitioners sent out to doctors, shared with the M.E.N. last night, Professor Martin Marshall, RCGP Chair, and Professor Chris Whitty, Chief Medical Officer for England, set out the reasons for the booster push - warning of the Omicron spread among young adults.
They have written that 'the wave will be much larger in two to three weeks, and if it runs through an upboosted population the subsequent avoidable impact on the NHS, and almost certainly on severe disease and mortality will be significant'.
'The NHS will then be hit with a large wave of patients at the worst time of the year, and at a point it is likely many colleagues will be ill, isolating or caring for family members due to the size of the wave.'
The Department of Health and Social Care has been contacted for comment.
