On top of the expected core business of managing the health of the majority of our community - their blood pressure, their asthma, their diabetes, their ear infections, their thyroid problems and their depression, their eczema, their sore backs, their gout, their sprains, strains, infected wounds and more - we are expected to make contact with all positive Covid cases, assess their health and welfare needs, and monitor them regularly if there are concerns.
We are dealing with the fears and anxieties not only of our patients and their whanau, but also of our staff and their whanau too.
We are fielding the many questions to which the answers may be found online, but that our patients want to ask of an actual person because they are overwhelmed with the changing rules, or just want to talk to someone whom they trust.
We, too, have staff off sick and staff who are isolating.
We, too, have families.
We are working seven days a week, including after hours, with a dwindling workforce as more of us succumb.
To be honest, seven days of isolation sounds like a welcome relief at the moment, if only we could rest - but no, if we're standing then we continue to work from home because there is no one left to cover us.
I'm tired of justifying to our patients why we are asking them to swap their fabric mask for a medical-grade mask when they have a face to face consultation with us.
I accept that their fabric mask was expensive.
Perhaps they don't realise that medical centre waiting rooms are a high risk place to be for any length of time, and that they will not be my only 15 minute face to face contact for today, but one of perhaps 20 or more.
When they pull their chair close to me at my desk, or wear their mask under their nose instead of over it, they put me at risk as well as my team, my family, and the practice as a business.
When they complain that they were asked to enter the practice via a different door from usual, perhaps they don't realise ... it protects them from having to walk through the high risk waiting areas and treatment areas.
They are not being treated as a "second class citizen" - they are being respected and kept as safe as we can keep them.
When they complain that they were charged for a phone consultation with a GP or nurse - "It was only a phone call!" - perhaps they don't realise that the clinician may be working from home.
Or that again, we are helping our patients to avoid coming into our high-risk workplace unless it is absolutely necessary for them.
Did the clinician listen, ask questions, diagnose and treat you over the phone?
Bonus! You didn't even have to leave home or work and you got a great service, and yes, that service does need to be purchased by you.
When they are rude about being asked the usual screening questions yet again, or they don't admit to having symptoms, they put the whole practice at risk of closing.
Currently, our small team receives more than 40 phone calls every hour that we are open.
Our supply chain is limited - it's not our fault that some medications are unavailable, that pharmacies are required to dispense medicines monthly instead of three-monthly, that the drivers who deliver our liquid nitrogen are off sick too.
It's not unreasonable, surely, for us to expect to charge for our services?
It's also not our fault that Hawke's Bay is short of around 20 full-time GPs - to fill the vacancies in practices, and to cater for the thousands of Hawke's Bay people who are not actually enrolled with a general practice.
It's not our fault that we have no spare nursing capacity either, and that any casual nurses who used to be available were swept up by the DHB for vaccinating and swabbing so that there is no one left to relieve our tired staff.
We are tired of hearing all about the hospitals and Covid.
We absolutely support our secondary care colleagues - we couldn't do their jobs, and equally they couldn't do ours.
But the reality is that the bulk of the Covid work is being done in general practice.
We don't get to cancel our clinics until this is over.
We don't get thanked for doing a virtual consultation instead of a face to face one. We don't get recognised as heroes.
We don't get a purpose-built Covid ward at the public's expense - instead, we hire and equip a porta cabin for consultations with our symptomatic patients, and we open the windows, if we have any, in our consultation rooms to encourage airflow.
Every day, my team and I deal with multiple complaints from people who have not thought about the view from where we sit, gowned, masked and PPEd to the hilt all day, every day.
We deal with the anger of those who have made health choices that have consequences for others apart from themselves.
We deal with the bewilderment of those who just want it all to go "back to normal", who blame the changes on greed rather than a pandemic.
We deal with the fears and uncertainties that may be similar to our own.
I'm tired of justifying why I do everything I can to keep my team and my patients as safe as we can.
I'm tired of justifying why we cannot run a business on goodwill and compassion.
I'm tired of the demands, the criticisms, the rudeness and the selfishness that is destroying my wonderful team.
I am 100 per cent behind our community pharmacy colleagues and I commiserate with the pharmacist who went home and cried at the end of the day - because we do that too.
