Professional

Before I went to France I managed to register with a local GP and was impressed to learn that they like to meet all their new patients face-to-face for a long fact-checking appointment. Mine was this morning at 10am. The doctor was very nice and very thorough and understood why I no longer have cervical screening but should in fact have blood tests instead, so he ordered a bunch of blood tests for me. I told him I'd got a stiff shoulder and had had since December and that I thought it might be arthritis but that hadn't been confirmed. He told me to book a physio appointment with the receptionist. Once the session was over I went to the receptionist who told me where I needed to go to have the blood test taken and advised me that it was better to book the appointment online than by telephone. I mentioned the physio and was booked an appointment I can get to after work on Monday week. I explained that I was beginning a new job and didn't really want to be asking for any time off work in the first few weeks, and she completely agreed. Then I returned home and found it an absolute doddle to register with the blood testing place and to my utter amazement they had appointments available this afternoon, so I booked one of those, no waiting around at all, my appointment was exactly on time and I was finished by 2pm. So impressed!

The next challenge is to register with an NHS dentist, which is a far more difficult trick.

An extra bit of dereliction