WE are very quick to moan about GP appointments with many people now just voting with their feet and turning up at the Royal Bolton Hospital’s A & E department instead.

But are we being fair to our local GP practices and are we being too inflexible about their services?

It’s an obvious question when you learn there were 20,000 unused GP appointments in Bolton in the past year - a situation revealed just as local health chiefs were forced to declare “critical incident” status when 360 people turned up at A & E on Easter Monday.

Now there is no way on earth that 360 individuals were suddenly and violently suffering injury or illness that demanded emergency medical help.

It’s true that you can’t always get a quick GP appointment when you ring up, But, if you’re in real pain or your condition means you need to be seen urgently, most GP’s have a system to get you an appointment quickly.

I rang up our GP practice with a non-urgent foot problem last week. The earliest appointment was a fortnight away. OK, I wasn’t too happy about that, but I was advised to ring again for other appointments that might come up. So the next day I rang back and was given an appointment much earlier because one had come up in the meantime. I’d persevered and they had been as good as their word.

It’s worrying that 20,000 available appointments have gone begging. If it’s because the available times aren’t very convenient for people or aren’t immediate then it sounds like it’s not the system that’s wrong but our perception of how the NHS actually works.

Bolton is a busy, bustling town. It has a large population and, because of social conditions and other factors, certain recurring problems swallow up plenty of medical resources. On top of that, the NHS is also coping with all the effects of lifestyle choices like smoking and excessive drinking.

All things considered, our medical personnel – in GP practices, health centres and in hospital – do an amazing job. Our GPs are front-line in the battle for our good health; they want us to be well.

But, it’s also up to us to work with the service to use resources practically and sensibly. And thousands of unused GP appointments at the same time as massed patients at A & E shows we are not.