DOCTORS have hit back at “GP bashing” in the media regarding their response to the Coronavirus pandemic.

Staff at Maryport Health Services have reacted to media coverage critical of GPs which says they are reluctant to leave their desk during the Covid-19 pandemic.

GP at Maryport Health Services Dan Berkeley said that positive changes have been made to the service since the outbreak.

He said: “We had to change the entire way we run appointments at the practice in the space of about a week in March 2020 in response to the pandemic. We used to have a system where if it was an emergency you saw a GP or nurse that day, but otherwise you would wait two weeks or sometimes sadly more to see the GP of your choice.

“With Covid we had to massively restrict access to people coming into the surgery. This was to protect patients and ourselves.”

“We were conscious that if we all went off sick with Covid there would be no-one to help patients, and we were also conscious of the fact that the patients we did need to bring down were often people in high risk categories so we had to ensure the practice was a safe place for them to come.”

Dr Berkeley said that speaking to people over the phone and through online consultations has cut waiting times.

He believes this is a lesson that can benefit the service in the Covid-19 recovery: “Throughout the pandemic we saw everyone that needed to be seen and a clinician called everyone who wanted an appointment back either the same day or the next day, we then dealt with their problems over the phone if possible or face to face if needed the same day.”

New technology that allows patients to send pictures has helped the surgery deliver a service safely.

Dr Berkeley said: “We need to learn the good and bad lessons from this.”

He warned that doctor’s surgeries risk going back to a situation before the pandemic that nobody was happy with.

The challenge comes in deciding what to do now that the pandemic is starting to ease. Campaigns such as that run by the daily mail recently to ‘make GPs open their doors’ are disingenuous given our doors have never been shut. We could soon go back to exactly how things were before the pandemic, but is that the right thing to do? Is it really what most people want?”