Long Covid sufferers blast ‘gaslighting’ from GPs in struggle to get treatment

Professor Martin Marshall, chair of the Royal College of GPs told the Health and Social Care Committee the pandemic ‘might be over for pubs and nightclubs, but it’s not over for health services.’

Lere Fisher told the Health Select Committee his GP laughed at him when he said he felt he had Covid

Long Covid sufferers have recalled their anguish when seeking help from their GP and claimed “there was a lot of gaslighting”.

Lere Fisher, who caught Covid in March 2020, told MPs that his mental health had deteriorated due to the “absolutely horrendous” treatment from medics through remote appointments.

At a hearing of the Commons Health Select Committee, Mr Fisher said he had to “fight to be heard” when seeking treatment.

Another patient, Helen Lunt Davies, said her life has been “unrecognisable in the last 18 months”.

Within four months of getting Covid she was left bed bound as she no longer had the energy to “fight doctor’s receptionists in order to get an appointment or at least be heard.”

She said: “It was very difficult to seek treatment.

“And I don’t think they knew what to do with me because nobody had heard of long Covid. And at that point wasn’t long, it was still acute.

“I had to do all the chasing and seeking help.”

She said “no one should have to fight for their treatment and no patient should feel abandoned” as she was by medics who left her stressed and hopeless.

Helen Lunt Davies told the Health Select Committee she had to fight to even get a phone appointment with her GP when she was battling Covid symptoms

But Professor Martin Marshall, chairman of the Royal College of General Practitioners, could not confirm to the committee when face to face appointments would resume.

Mr Fisher told MPs he knew he had Covid immediately, saying: “I experienced delirium, chest pains, brain fog, I couldn’t plan ahead for more than a few hours.”

But because there wasn’t any face-to-face appointments, “(Doctors) couldn’t see anything visually for how I looked. It was a fight, a fight to be heard. And there was a lot of gaslighting.”

Asked to describe his experience with remote appointments by Tory MP Dean Russell, he said: “Absolutely horrendous, absolutely horrendous. At the time, tests were only given to frontline workers so thee was no way I could confirm that I had Covid.

“This set a precedence for the help I received. Doctors told me, ‘you think you have Covid, I’m sure you don’t’.

Former Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt led the inquiry into the NHS backlog
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“When I spoke to my GP they actually laughed. I was even told to have paracetamol with a glass of water after describing my symptoms.”

Professor Marshall told the Committee that some patients preferred appointments over the phone or via video, while others wanted to be seen face-to-face, but could not be due to Covid.

He said about 80% of general practice appointments were conducted face-to-face prior to the pandemic, dropping to 10% in the first wave and now sitting at about 56%.

He told MPs that 56% was “where we should be” adding that face-to-face appointments “aren’t needed by everybody” and “I don’t think we’re going to go back to 80% of consultations in general practice being face-to-face”.

Last week, Health Secretary Sajid Javid said the UK would have to deal with a “social backlog in mental health and public health” as well as ballooning NHS waiting lists after the pandemic.

The Government has promised an extra £2.3billion a year to transform mental health services by 2023.