GP surgeries in North Yorkshire offer advice for patients as pressure on health service increases
Last week was the busiest yet for the health service this winter
We're hearing about the pressure on GP surgeries in North Yorkshire - as the NHS recorded its busiest week of the Winter so far.
NHS leaders say hospitals are "jam packed".
Dr Abbie Brooks is a GP in York and says they're also feeling the strain.
"Every year we say there's been unprecedented demand, but every winter we see a huge influx of viral illness, flu being one of them but there's multiple viruses that can make people unwell in a number of different ways. The majority of people, of course, can care for themselves at home, but there's a group of vulnerable people who have more severe disease so end up in hospital so that can mean that hospitals fill up very quickly.
"We know that winter in the NHS is a problem, whether you're AGP or pharmacist, an A&E consultant or a nurse on the ward and it's more challenging. Sometimes with these viral illnesses, be it flu or norovirus, you also need to isolate people, and that takes space, and hospitals don't necessarily have that much space. Also we don't want people in our waiting rooms passing things on to other people as well. So it's about caring for these people with the balance of making sure that we don't put other people at risk as well."
"The first thing would be to make sure that patients understand how they can care for themselves at home and what symptoms I would worry about that would need checking over. So certainly I would hope that people would would stock in a good number of medications, be that something to help with sinus congestion and paracetamol, Ibuprofen, if you can take it, there's lots of good remedies that you can get from your pharmacy, which I would recommend people stock up with before they get sick, so that you've got an easy access to it in the bathroom cupboards or wherever they might store it.
Trying to keep waiting rooms safe
"So most viruses, you get better very quickly. Five to seven days and you're back to normal. Flu definitely takes a bit longer to get over. Most people are in bed for a good seven to 10 days and then slowly start to get back to normal. But it can be really weeks before they're back to the the energy levels that they're used to. So from a waiting room perspective, we telephone people first just to make sure that they need to come and see us and if usually we ask them to come and see us if we're unsure of what that diagnosis is.
"We might think, oh, that's classical Flu. We give you some advice and see how you go for the next couple of days. If there's any concern, be that you're having a flare up of your asthma or you're vulnerable and it might be your heart, or it might be a chest infection, then we would ask you to come down. We try and keep our waiting room safe, enough room and try and stagger the number of people coming so that we're not bursting at the seams so that we're putting those vulnerable people, in a safe a place as possible, but most people with flu and viral illnesses don't need to come and see us."