I"ve worked as a GP receptionist under a year and I"m already burnt out

It’s only 8.15am and the appointments for the day are already fully booked despite our appointment booking line opening at 8am. Less than a year ago this was an anomaly, now it’s the norm, as are queues out the door when we open. I spend the rest of the morning bearing the brunt of patient irritation, which is mostly aimed at our lack of appointments. I share their frustration because the service is substandard and it only seems to be getting worse.

The calls keep flooding in, the phone rings all day and I often finish work with a headache from the sound. The calls can be incredibly stressful one moment – talking to someone who is struggling to breathe – to mundane the next with patients who are convinced that their three-day cough constitutes an emergency. Patient anger often unfortunately comes back on to the receptionists, I wish they could see the wider picture and direct their anger at the government that is responsible for cutting their services.

Much of my job involves reducing doctors’ workloads so they can spend more time with patients. The administration aspect of the NHS is what keeps the service running. However, the demands of the job and the ever rising number of patients relative to staff make it impossible to do the job well. I think back to my early enthusiasm and my wish to help patients. Now I just feel the steady erosion of my capacity to help. I can’t offer people appointments that aren’t there. I can’t give any patient any real time and attention because there are just so many.

The stressful demands of the job mean that there are high levels of staff sickness; this makes staff morale low and turnover high. I’ve been in the role for less than a year and I’m already burnt out. I’m exhausted all the time and the stress from the job has affected my personal life, making it difficult to sleep and giving me a constant sense of worry. I’ve even been referred to counselling by my doctor because of the stress and anxiety my job causes me, ironically further burdening the NHS.

I work in a deprived area in the midlands and I’ve seen firsthand the long-lasting and far-reaching effects of poverty. The lack of investment and funding in the NHS means that we are having to do more with a decreasing level of resources and a lot of cuts mean people are getting put back on to their frontline GP service.

We have numerous patients with complex mental health issues who we are called about every day, usually by social workers or concerned relatives, because the support they need has been cut elsewhere. There’s the heroin addict who goes in and out of prison and mental health units – every time he is released he goes missing for days until we are informed that he has been sent back to another institution.

There was also a patient who was terminally ill with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, but also suffered from severe anxiety and schizophrenia, who called us or the emergency service in a frantic state every day for months until he died. He would often be having panic attacks on the phone or hearing voices – this was incredibly distressing as I felt underprepared to deal with such complex issues. One woman was so distressed after cutbacks on the time she received from carers that she attempted suicide just weeks later. She now remains on an A&E ward.

Some people’s lives are so chaotic and their support networks so poor that it seems that the NHS is the only consistent factor in their lives. How will they cope when services they rely on continually suffer from cutbacks? Without drastic improvements in funding and a greater number of staff, these issues will only get worse. I worry about the future of our practice, our patients and the NHS at large. But for now I’m overstretched and exhausted, I’m certain that neither I nor the NHS can keep this up for much longer.

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I"ve worked as a GP receptionist under a year and I"m already burnt out