What is out of hours care and what does this cover?

So out of hours care is GP care, so it’s in the community but when your GP surgery is closed. So most GPs cover from 8:00 in the morning till 6:30 in the evening and some do clinics in the evenings and the weekends as well. But outside those times, other GPs will be offering the same sort of service but to a bigger range of patients.

So are these, is this out of hours service somewhere that patients go to or is it over the phone, cos I know there’s some phone services as well?

Yes, usually what will happen is that you will ring up, you may get some advice over the phone, you may be invited to come to the out of hours centre to be seen by a doctor. Or sometimes the doctor may come to you if that’s necessary.

I called 111, it was over the weekend that I just decided I can’t, and yes they told me to go and see the GP.

So, you called 111 – they told you to go to see the GP this was a weekend?

Yes.

So did you know what to do in that situation?

They told me that there was a special practice that haswhere I could go so it was really good actually. They told…and it was really convenient and close by and I could go in really quickly, so I was really impressed with how quickly I could see someone actually, yeah.

So you spoke to somebody on the phone. Once you put the phone down did you go more or less straight away?

I did. At this point I was quite panicked, especially that I think having that confirmation that I did need to see the GP made me think, ‘I can’t keep denying this’, yeah.

Did you go by yourself or?

I went by myself, yeah.

And so this was an out of hour’s service. Whereabouts was it, you mentioned it was close, it wasn’t your actual GP’s surgery?

No, it was just down the road from here, so it was about a twenty minute walk for me from home, yeah.

Were you OK walking?

I was fine, yeah, I could see enough.

You could see enough to…

Yes, I could.

Was it all blurry though?

It was, yeah. Well I had just these black patches where I couldn’t see anything, yeah.

That’s quite scary in a way isn’t it?

It was, I was quite panicked to be honest, yeah.

So you went then to see a doctor there?

Yeah.

Can you remember if you had to wait a long time, or were you seen quite quickly?

I think I waited about half an hour, which I guess is what I was expecting. They told me that it might be a wait. I was just happy to be there to be honest, yeah.

So you then got seen. Can you remember who you were seen by?

I can’t remember their name or anything, I can remember she was a female GP, yeah.

And you told her what was happening?

Yes.

What did she say or do, did she?

It was interesting so she thought it was a migraine as well. She didn’t really know what to make of it to be honest, which you wouldn’t expect her to because it’s such a rare thing. But actually, I mean she didn’t actually formally test my vision which I was really surprised about. So she looked at my retina, couldn’t see anything, and just, she prescribed me some migraine medication and told me that it might be a migraine. But said that I should go to eye casualty, and gave me a little slip to go and see them at a certain time.

I actually ended up going a lot earlier than she’d given me the slip for because by this point I was really worried. I had quite a bad headache and things were just getting worse, and I just thought, ‘I’ve got to go into hospital,’ yeah.