The Padarn waiting times are the most infuriating thing in Aber right now

Padarn Surgery on Penglais hill in one way or another has had a habit of making life too damn hard to get an appointment.

Some students claim to have waited more than a month for issues that if left unaided could’ve led to developments and further problems. Is it because in trying to take all students of the town on-board? Is the surgery is simply spreading itself too thin? Or something more to do with inefficiency in the NHS as a whole? Whatever the answer, one thing is for sure: waiting times are far, far too long.

Freshers’ flu, medication, mental health, ongoing treatment – we all go to our GP for a variety of reasons. Most of us are used to being able to see our GP after a few days back home with appointments being available at least the same week, but how about a month for a non-emergency appointment?

Back in May I fractured my heel, and in need of a check up to make sure it had healed correctly I tried to book an appointment for  early October. They told me to come back in November. November came along, I went to my appointment only to be told that I need to instead go to the orthopaedics specialist but – surprise, surprise – they could’t see me until March. This period totalled six months for a problem that had happened almost a year ago.

So what do people seem to be waiting for such a long time? Is it because they simply have too many students and locals on the books when other surgery’s like the Church Surgery in town could accommodate more and ease off the pressures?

Or perhaps in this Tumblr age we simply have an abundance of people who book every 5pm slot on a Thursday every week because they found a new mole on their arm, or they developed a cough or perhaps their hangover was just too much.

Safely assuming I couldn’t be the only forced to jump through ridiculous hoops in a bid to just keep healthy, I found other students on their experiences with Padarn surgery and their waiting times.

First year Maths, Jay Bowlder told us how it took “three to four weeks to get a repeat prescription sorted. Fortunately I stocked up before I came to uni but if I hadn’t, it would have been a problem.

“I came down with a cough in mid-November, left it for a week then called to book an appointment. They said they had nothing before Christmas and did not know if they had anything after Christmas.

“I had to go home and go to a walk in clinic to get it sorted out. It was fine a week after the walk in clinic.”

First year Creative Writing student, Rylan Shafer added: “ I signed up for my appointment on December 6th but it wasn’t until January 14th. Then, they had my address wrong and sent my info somewhere else.”

In the end Rylan had to go to A&E where it was revealed he may have been asthmatic. Imagine if he hadn’t gone and he’d been caught out because Padarn is either too poorly organised or over stretched Rylan could’ve had an asthma attack with no inhaler or knowledge that he had had asthma.

It’s hard to escape the feeling that the students’ needs for welfare and health aren’t being met.