Have you ever seen the same doctor twice? I haven't

His name was Dr Kerr and he carried one of those traditional leather doctor’s bags that seemed to carry the contents of an entire chemist’s shop. He would come to the house, come upstairs where one of us kids would be sick in bed.

“Open your mouth and say ‘ahhhhh,” he would ask, as he placed a thermometer on my tongue, or that of my brother or sister.

As a child he seemed to me quite old, although looking back he was probably no more than 40.

Unless he was on holiday or ill, Dr Kerr was the only doctor who came to see us. My mum would ring the surgery and it would be a given that he was the doctor who came. He was, after all, our family doctor.

Other families also had one doctor from the local practice who they could call their own, the advantage being that doctors knew patients well and were familiar with their medical history.

If you had to fill in a form and it asked for the name of your doctor, you knew it.

It’s very different nowadays. Family doctors are a 'thing of the past' with only half of patients always or even sometimes able to see the same GP, a study has found.

It’s seen as an issue that hampers care and forces patients to waste time repeating their medical history on every visit.

According to a poll of 2,339 patients, commissioned by the Liberal Democrats, 57 per cent saw a GP more than once over the past couple of years, with 20 per cent having more than five appointments. Just over half said they always or sometimes saw the same doctor.

From my own experience I would have thought that figure would be far lower. These days, once you have waited the requisite two to three months for an appointment, it’s a near-miracle to see a doctor you’ve seen before. Even when you ask for a doctor by name, chances are he or she isn’t at work that day, has left the practice, or was a locum filling in. My elderly neighbour recently asked to see a certain GP and was told: "She only comes in for half a day each month."

In the survey, 29 per cent said they ‘rarely' saw the same medic and 18 per cent never saw the same one - rising to 27 per cent of those aged 65 and over. This is despite research showing that seeing the same GP helps the elderly avoid hospital admissions and improves the quality of treatment.

Most of us don't have a doctor we know and who knows us. Picture: Pixabay

When you have an appointment, it can take half the time to run through your medical back story, which often plays its part in your current ailment.

It would be nice to see a GP who you had not only seen before but who - even vaguely - remembered you. But with an ever-increasing number of patients and surgeries, especially in urban areas, it’s unachievable.

In my experience, patients are lucky to get an appointment at the same surgery never mind with the same GP. Many practices, like mine, have been swallowed up to become part of a far larger city or district-wide group. Even when you ask to a visit a particular surgery, you don't always get an appointment there.

Then again, you may not even get to see a GP, with the proliferation of physician associates (PAs), who, after just two years medical training, do not have the expertise of a qualified junior doctor, but who are given responsibility to make key decisions.

It’s the government's way of addressing the workforce crisis in the NHS but erodes the status of doctors and doesn’t inspire confidence in patients.

It's all a far cry from the days of the family GP, who knew patients by name, knew whether they'd had mumps as a child, broken a leg falling from a tree as a teen, or suffered post-natal depression after childbirth. That familiarity brought a certain level of comfort and reassurance. Sadly, those days are gone, never to return.

I couldn't name one doctor at our surgery, I've never seen the same one twice, and if I ever visit, whoever I see doesn't know me from Adam.