{"id":793158,"date":"2026-10-06T00:10:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-06T00:10:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/793158\/"},"modified":"2026-10-06T00:10:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-06T00:10:09","slug":"gp-appointment-time-making-it-harder-to-do-cancer-checks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/793158\/","title":{"rendered":"GP appointment time ‘making it harder to do cancer checks’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thomas said continuity of care came up repeatedly among the Tenovus survey of GPs.<\/p>\n

“You have a 20% less chance of dying if you have the same team that looks after you,” she said.<\/p>\n

Maria Bailey feels being able to see the same GP was a factor in her own cervical cancer diagnosis.<\/p>\n

“I feel really lucky that she took me seriously from the off. She knows me – she knew I was alarmed and [the symptoms] weren’t normal for me. She took it very seriously,” she said. <\/p>\n

The 55-year-old from Pencoed, Bridgend county, experienced increased fatigue and light vaginal bleeding but put it down to working extra hours and the menopause.<\/p>\n

But in February she spoke to her GP after the bleeding intensified.<\/p>\n

“It was heavy bleeding and quite large clots, which I’ve never had before – they looked like baby seals and that was really alarming.”<\/p>\n

An internal examination followed by a raft of further tests uncovered a 4cm (1.5in) tumour and grade 2 cancer, external<\/a> around her cervix.<\/p>\n

“I was in shock, but as soon as they said it wasn’t life-threatening, that was it. It was just one gear – and that was go.”<\/p>\n

Maria underwent chemotherapy, radiotherapy and brachytherapy, external<\/a> across centres in Swansea and Cardiff and has since been raising money to provide essential provisions for others going through treatment for cervical cancer.<\/p>\n

“I’m quite an organised person and don’t like walking into anything blind,” she said.<\/p>\n

But an online search for advice about the things needed when starting treatment yielded very little.<\/p>\n

She has now donated several “Bailey’s bags” to two cancer centres containing items such as a water bottle, strong-flavoured sweets to overcome the metallic taste treatment can leave, a foldable fan, neck cushion, battery pack for USB devices and a medication box.<\/p>\n

The Welsh government said: “We’re committed to strengthening primary care as the foundation of the NHS in Wales. <\/p>\n

“We’ve urged health boards to shift more resources towards primary and community care, with a further primary care summit planned to track their progress. <\/p>\n

“We’re updating our women’s health plan to make sure women’s voices are heard, and transforming how the NHS prevents, diagnoses and treats cancer through our 10-year national cancer strategy, with a focus on earlier diagnosis.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Thomas said continuity of care came up repeatedly among the Tenovus survey of GPs. “You have a 20%…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":793159,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[59,102,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-793158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-gb","tag-health","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=793158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793158\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/793159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=793158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=793158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=793158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}