Dr. Edel McGinnity:

In response to an earlier question, the patient had missed a couple of appointments. One of the key complicating factors for our patients are their psycho-social problems. What often happens is that they miss their appointments and in Catherine's case, it was because she was going to the funeral and was then at the school trying to sort out her daughter's problems so she missed booked appointments. One then has to be flexible enough to catch them when they turn up with what is important to them, which in her case, was her clothing letter and her chest infection. I needed to create the time to capitalise on that to carry out the smear test but I did not. We have two fantastic practice nurses who carry out huge amounts of that chronic disease management. It is difficult for many of our patients who have really complicated lives. One needs to be flexible with them.

We have some slight insight into it because we spend a lot of time running clinics and meeting people, realising that one cap does not fit all and that five or ten minutes is not enough when something is complicated. That aspect of it I absolutely accept.