30 patients queue outside Argyle Street surgery to see GP

Argyle Street surgery is open from 08:00 to 18.30 five days a week

Patients are queuing in the cold for up to an hour before a GP surgery opens - just to get an appointment, it has been claimed.

Up to 30 people have been seen outside the Pembrokeshire surgery, while one patient failed to get a slot despite phoning over 200 times before 08:15.

Dr David Wilson said the Argyle Street surgery in Pembroke Dock has struggled to recruit staff.

Patients have also been told to play their part by not missing appointments.

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Argyle Street surgery is run by the Argyle Medical Group, which also has practices in Neyland and Pembroke.

Speaking on BBC Radio Wales, one queuing patient who did not want to be named, said: "You ring at 8 o'clock and you can't get through till 9, and then all the appointments are gone, so you've got to do this.

"We were here about two weeks ago and there were about 30 people queued from here right round the back.

"I rang 215 times the other morning. By quarter past eight when they did answer the phone, there were no appointments left."

A patient's call log to the surgery

Another patient, called Karen, said it is "pot luck" whether she got an appointment.

"They're doing the best job they can I suppose," she said.

"The doctors they have are wonderful once you get in there, but the system has to change... it's dreadful."

Dr Wilson told BBC Radio Wales' Jason Mohammad programme: "The issue we've got is capacity... unfortunately as staff have left, retired or moved to elsewhere in the UK we just haven't been able to recruit a replacement.

"Ideally, we'd have enough doctors to offer everyone an appointment when they needed it, we just don't have that, unfortunately," he said.

Surgery needs support

Also speaking was Angela Burns, AM for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire, and the Conservative's health spokeswoman.

She said she made it "very clear" in her recent meeting with the Hywel Dda University Health Board that it must "support Argyle Street more proactively".

"I think they could deploy more of their own staff to work in their practice. They also need the help the practice with the provision of locum GPs," she said.

She also criticised the merging of three GP practices into one, saying they serve too many patients.

Mrs Burns also called for patients to play their part.

"There about 500 no-shows every month," she said, including people who have made an appointment that same day.