MAKING an appointment to see your GP is like trying to get an audience with the Pope – or at least it is at my surgery and I suspect many more.

You need to be either very sick or very determined.

Which is why it is doubly aggravating to read last week’s article by Hannah Bargery which revealed that missed GP appointments cost more than £5,000 in March alone.

If you manage to get an appointment then it’s unforgivable to not attend or to at least give notice that you’re not going to make it so someone else can take that slot.

I also welcome hospital boss Mel Pickup’s text remind service idea. It’s something my dentist has been doing for a while and it works.

My GP practice in Stockton Heath has thousands of patients, I appreciate. But you can only get a same day appointment if it’s an emergency. Other than that you have to wait several weeks.

It might not be an emergency but do you really want to wait weeks for something that’s causing you enough of a problem that you feel the need to seek a doctor’s advice?

Since my own doctor retired just over a year ago, I’ve been reluctant to see another GP. No one else knows me, or any of my past history, so it’s not really the same.

You can no longer ring at 8.30am for an appointment unless it’s an emergency. You now have to call after 1.30pm. If you work that’s hardly convenient.

And you can’t book more than two weeks in advance, so if you know you’ve got to go back to see the doctor in a month’s time, you’ve got to start the whole process all over again.

As for late nights – forget it – 6pm is the last appointment. So if you work in Manchester or Liverpool and have an ongoing condition like diabetes, then you’ll need to take half a day off work for any routine check-up.

When are GP surgeries going to move with the times? Or is it all just part of an elaborate plan to stop us seeing a doctor?

Now there is even a symptom checker on the Stockton Heath surgery website for some self diagnosis! Talk about healing yourself.

Or you could just Google your symptoms and really give yourself a fright – that’s guaranteed to give you high blood pressure!