Allison PEARSON

Anew NHS advertising campaign offers advice for people who are experiencing a persistent cough or prolonged stomach pain: don’t hesitate to seek advice from your GP. “Good luck with that!” “Yeah, right.” “You’ve got more chance of getting into Kabul airport than of breaking into our surgery.” Or simply: “What’s a GP?” Those were among the printable responses to the suggestion that anyone who may have cancer should consult their doctor.

What did the Department of Health think the reaction would be? “Goodness, yes, silly me. I must stop ignoring the cramps and diarrhoea I’ve had for four and a half months and make an appointment to see my GP at once. Which, in actual fact, I have tried to do for 23 successive days, picking up the phone at 8am, but the Gorgon gatekeeper says I still can’t see the doctor. Instead, I must fill in the econsult, which my husband calls the einsult. If you can’t find your ailment in the dropdown menu, they tell you to dial 111 and, if you do eventually get through to 111, they tell you to … make an appointment to see your GP. Gah!”

Distress at being unable to see a doctor in person for well over a year has hardened into cynicism. There is mounting anger that a highly-rewarded, once highly-respected profession continues to insist that it is “fully open” when personal experience suggests it is hiding behind an increasingly threadbare Covid sofa. I was sorry, but not at all surprised, to read that GP practices are facing a “torrent of abuse” as patient frustration boils over.

A shameless British Medical Association yesterday sought to obscure its role in the crisis by publishing a survey which found that “having more doctors at surgeries is the most important change patients want to see”. Well, yes. Having existing GPS do their job in person would be even better.

But who is backing those GPS who don’t want to return to normal working because – unlike shopworkers, waiters, district nurses and delivery drivers – they are at risk from a fast-receding virus? That would be the British Medical Association, which demands yet more funding from the Government for GPS who prefer not to see the men and women who pay their salaries.

Back in May, The Telegraph won an important victory for readers who had suffered terribly, even dying prematurely in some cases, after being unable to obtain a diagnosis in person. In response to the furore, Dr Nikki Kanani, the medical director for primary care of NHS England, updated its guidance to say that patients should be able to see a GP if they so wished. Arrogant and unaccountable doctors knew better. The BMA’S GP committee passed a vote of no confidence in Dr Kanani, saying the change of stance was “tone deaf ” and “not based on the needs of the profession”. God forbid a tonedeaf profession should respond to the needs of its patients.

Unbelievably, since the easing of lockdown restrictions, access to GP surgeries has remained unchanged. In some areas, fewer than four in 10 appointments are conducted face to face, with “digital triage” weeding out the time-wasters and hypochondriacs. But what if they’re not malingerers?

Cancer cannot be diagnosed on the phone. Isn’t that what all those NHS adverts are basically admitting? And yet, instead of blaming the GPS for not seeing patients, the Government elects to chide patients for not seeing the GP. At this point, we might note that doctors in other European countries continued to see sick people throughout the pandemic. They wouldn’t get paid if they hadn’t.

Am I the only one who winces when Sajid Javid says what a wonderful job the NHS is doing, while, every day, radiographers are finding advanced, untreatable cancers in younger and younger patients who should have been referred last year by their GP?

People are still scared to go to hospital, still dying in great pain at home. Not because of Covid per se, but because they know that cruel coronavirus regulations mean that, once they enter a hospital, they may never see their family again.

My friend’s mother, Yvonne, got a letter from the hospital saying her chemo was at an end because, during lockdown, cancer treatment would only continue for patients they thought might live. The 74-year-old accepted her death sentence, but with one reservation. “Whatever happens, please let me die at home with you,” she begged her husband, John, and their two daughters.

Five weeks ago, having tried and failed to get hold of that elusive creature called a GP, Yvonne’s family had no choice but to call an ambulance. Tumours and fluid retention had enlarged Yvonne’s stomach to the point where “Mum looked like she was pregnant with triplets”. Her pain was off the charts.

Being in hospital was every bit as bad as Yvonne had feared. Only one person was allowed to visit daily for an hour. Eighty-year-old John needed to show constant proof of a negative test. Yvonne’s daughters, Sarah and Cathryn, were told by a doctor that while their mother was still receiving treatment for pneumonia and sepsis, they couldn’t visit her because she didn’t qualify as “end of life care”. Once the doctor took Yvonne off antibiotics, which actually seemed to be helping, Sarah and Cathryn could go to her bedside, but their mother would not be allowed water because she would then technically be classified as dying.

Yvonne’s girls were distraught. All they wanted was to be able to hold and reassure their mother, for such time as they had left together in this world.

It was then that an angel of mercy appeared in the form of a palliative care nurse. Let’s call her Marie. When Sarah and Cathryn told Marie about their mum’s situation, she snapped: “For God’s sake, I’ve had enough of this Covid b------s!”

The nurse told Sarah and Cathryn that the hospital hadn’t had a single Covid case for four months, yet managers still refused to exercise leniency towards relatives who were “in absolute bits” because they were missing the final days of a spouse or a parent. Marie told Sarah and Cathryn that they and their dad could go onto the ward to see their mum any time of day or night and to tell anyone who dared challenge them: “Marie says Yvonne is end of life care.”

The voice of good old British common sense has been drowned out by hysterical health and safety jobsworths for 17 months. But we still recognise it when we hear it, don’t we?

Like Marie, I’ve had enough of this Covid b------s. It bars patients from waiting rooms their taxes have paid for. It gives unions and NHS bureaucrats an excuse to string out the crisis indefinitely for their own selfish ends. It lets GPS improve their work-life balance while worsening the life-death balance of everyone else.

The BMA seems shocked that long-suffering patients are finally losing it with doctors. I’m not, are you?

They’ve improved their work-life balance at the cost of our lifedeath balance