New doctor new town

[Doings]

Ive moved to Cheltenham and now need to find a doctor surgery. Im so nervous about having to explain RLS all over again and pray they are sympathetic and helpful. Does anyone on this wonderful site know of any particular doctor in area that they can recommend.

Id be so grateful.

[MumofSam]

I can’t recommend a GP in your area, but my more recent experience is that they’re now far more knowledgeable and sympathetic. Certainly the young sounding GP I spoke to on the phone last week was. I’ve only really come across one GP who implied it was all in the mind mainly and asked me why couldn’t I just get up and walk around! I replied to her by asking her if she’d want to get up and start walking around at 4 in the morning! She said no. There’s always one ignorant GP in every practice I guess, but you just avoid them.

[Doings in reply to MumofSam]

Thank you. I’ll just have to bite the bullet - trial and error.

[Spurdog1 in reply to MumofSam]

My last Doctor was Dr Ropner at Berkeley place (I think they are moving to the St Pauls Clinic). Get him personally, you wont go too far wrong. I miss him, he understood me.

[Doings in reply to Spurdog1]

Gosh thank you I’ll definitely check it out. Much appreciated.

[Spurdog1 in reply to Doings]

I'd go back to him tomorrow if i could. He gave me the confidence, in him.

[Elffindoe]

This, I appreciate may feel quite daunting.

My view is that a true measure of a good doctor is not necessarily what they know or don't know. I wouldn't expect a GP to know about anything in depth. There's no room in the GP curriculum for everything.

However, GPs are educated in the need to inform themselves sufficiently to provide or coordinate the appropriate care for an individual and involve specialist services when required. That is a quote!

In which case if they have a patient with RLS then they should either inform themselves about it, or refer the patient to a specialist. The former is preferable since there are no RLS specialists in the UK.

A "good" doctor then, I'd expect, to do this. Without quibble.

Another measure of a "good" doctor is that they should offer "personalised care" and their care should be based on "the whole person", (another quote) not just the disease. Additionally, as regards this, they should use the patient's own experience to optimise their clinical management. Yet another quote!

I therefore think you should expect the above two things becasue that's what is "officially" expected.

I'd also expect to be treated with respect for privacy and dignity and not to be patronised, humiliated, belittled or threatened.

Bearing this in mind, you may (or hopefully may not) need to assert your rights to the above.

If your current RLS treatment is satisfactory then a copy of your GP medical record should be sent by your old GP to your new GP and there really should be no need to change any medication since a treatment plan is already established.

If the new doctor thinks there needs to be a change, nothing gives them the right to do this without first discussing it with you.

It depends what your medication is, generally speaking GPs are able to prescribe most RLS drugs. There is a "traffic right" system whereby GPs can prescribe some drugs (green) but not others (red), only a specialist. What's green and red may vary from one CCG area to another, but generally they will be sthe same. There may be differences in relation to opioids.

I suggest you see your new doctor with an open mind. It will serve no purpose making demands of them.

If they do require information,the following are links to good authoritive sources of information which they should find helpful. I'm sure many doctors are skeptical of patients "clutching a sheaf of printouts from the internet, demanding a particular treatment". Another quote.

These links are NOT DR Google!"

cks.nice.org.uk/topics/rest...

mayoclinicproceedings.org/a...

I hope your move is good in all other respects.

[Doings in reply to Elffindoe]

Thank you for your advice very interesting and I appreciate your time. It is tricky to know how a GP reacts until the situation comes up. I had one before who was new and temporary at the surgery and imposed her views on certain things with no investigation or compunction and caused me great misery with her judgement - i had to see a private specialist in the end to sort it out. So im wary and scared to go through that again if i can avoid it.

[Elffindoe in reply to Doings]

I can tell you my own scary stories, really scary. On the whole though, there are some excellent doctors around, whther they know about RLS or not!

[LinGriff]

Why not download and print some of the information that’s available. You could leave the GP with that to have a read and digest it. That’s what I would do good luck and hope you get a good GP

[Doings in reply to LinGriff]

Thank you much appreciated.