Doctor On Call service responded to 7,318 patients over Christmas

Heroic local GPs dealt with record numbers of calls over the New Year weekend, as many of their colleagues were affected by Covid-19.

The North East Doctor on Call service was exceptionally busy over the weekend, with additional doctors coming into manage the workload.

NEDOC managed 3,456 patients over the New Year holiday and a total of 7,318 patients over the Christmas and New Year period, compared to 6,544 in the same period last year when Delta was the variant of concern.

"This has been our busiest Christmas/New Year to date with so many calls dealing with Covid symptoms and requests for PCR tests," said Operations manager, Arlene Fitzsimons..

Over the weekend, GPs managed a total of 2,838 calls (82 per cent).

Despite some doctors becoming ill or isolating because of Covid-19, their sessions in the co-op were covered by their colleagues, in addition to the shifts they were already working and their mid-week daytime surgery work.

“This is truly a credit to all GPs working in the region, who are now all back to normal daytime GP surgery hours,” said Ms Fitzsimons.

The vast majority of calls were managed by doctor phone consultations as patients rang seeking requests for PCR tests as they could not get appointments through the self-refer booking system.

“The key concern for GPs working in the centres was that more acute cases would have difficulties getting through to the service,” said Ms Fitzsimons.

“We anticipate that the service will continue to be busy for the remainder of January as the Omicron variant reaches its estimated peak in mid-January.”

The service was also exceptionally busy over Christmas, managing 3,254 calls from Christmas Eve until Wednesday morning 29th December.

The service was busier than last year and the vast majority of calls (2,313) were dealt with by phone consultations with GPs, a situation that was inevitable given the explosion of Covid cases.

A further 374 patients who required further assessment were seen in the treatment centres.

“We were fortunate to have been able to utilise the healthcare workers derogation or NEDOC would have had to operate a depleted service over these two long weekends,” said Ms Fitzsimons.