> The main way is via your allocated General Practitioner (GP). To see a GP you need to telephone the GP's place of work, known as a surgery, and to have any chance of getting a same day appointment you need to call at 8am precisely. Don't call at 7.59 because you won't be connected, and don't leave it until 8.01 because it will be far too late. Call within the first few seconds after 8am and you'll be informed that you're in a queue, behind several dozen earlier callers.

1) Genuinely baffling to see people who think their individual sucky experience is universal. What you describe is how your gp works. Change GPs! There are better surgeries around.

I called my GP after 12 midday and explained that I had turned a bit yellow and had pain under my right ribcage, and they booked me in for an appointment a couple of hours later, and after I'd send them they booked me into my local hospital's surgical assessment unit (thus bypassing A&E) where I was hooked up to IV fluids and antibiotics. I got scans that day, I got surgery the day after, I was discharged a few days later when the infection had clear and my numbers were better.

Same day appointments are for emergencies, and if you have an emergency you will get a same day appoint

> The only other means of accessing the NHS is by rocking up at the Accident and Emergency (A&E)

No, this simply isn't true. In this order depending on severity of illness, people can chose to get support from: NHS Website, NHS 111, Pharmacy, GP, Minor Injury and Illness Units, Emergency Departments, or Ambos.

Plenty of services now have self referral - podiatry, physiotherapy, dietetics, eating disorder, mental health crisis, antenatal, etc etc. So you don't have to go via your gp, you just phone them up and make an appointment.