Doctors

professorben

The only thing more useless than a doctors receptionist is a pharmacist.  

Philly_Q

guitarfishbay said:

What I'd recommend is checking if your surgery does online booking, there can be slots that are available purely for people who book online.

At my surgery they won't actually let you book an appointment in person any more, they send you away to book online.

The online system does work quite well, when it works at all, but it always tells me I can only book one appointment without going through some kind of extra authorisation stage... which involves going to the surgery to get an activation code or something.

So more often than not, I have to go to the surgery in order to go back home to book an appointment online.

57Deluxe

professorben said:

The only thing more useless than a doctors receptionist is a pharmacist.  

or a Pharmacist's Receptionist??

professorben

 

57Deluxe said:

professorben said:

The only thing more useless than a doctors receptionist is a pharmacist.  

or a Pharmacist's Receptionist??

No no, my dislike of pharmacists is deeply ingrained. 

holnrew

I could only get an appointment with a nurse practitioner today. Had the worst sore throat of my life the last few days. I'm worried it won't get taken seriously

professorben

 

57Deluxe said:

professorben said:

The only thing more useless than a doctors receptionist is a pharmacist.  

or a Pharmacist's Receptionist??

No no, my dislike of pharmacists is deeply ingrained. 

They are the Estate Agents of the medical world. 

Ravenous

professorben said:

No no, my dislike of pharmacists is deeply ingrained. 

They are the Estate Agents of the medical world. 

Close, but Proctologists are the Estate Agents of the medical world...

jonnyburgo

I once had to take a sperm sample into the doctors, went up to the receptionist in the packed waiting room and said in hushed tones that I had a sample "IS IT URINE OR SPERM?" shouted the woman. Tact isn't their strong point.

sw67

My doctor has a new system that seems to work. You don't get to book appointments in advance. If you need a doctor you call and are seen that day.

Gagaryn

jonnyburgo said:

I once had to take a sperm sample into the doctors, went up to the receptionist in the packed waiting room and said in hushed tones that I had a sample "IS IT URINE OR SPERM?" shouted the woman. Tact isn't their strong point.

should have told her to taste it

RocknRollDave

This is how it goes at our GP surgery when you ring up:

"Can I get an appointment ....?"
"We're not doing appointments, best thing to do is to come in first thing and queue"

So you get there first thing and let them know at the desk that you are there:

"...Do you have an appointment...?"

It would be funny if it weren't so infuriating. We tend to just go to the walk-in centre instead.

mikeyrob73

Been sat here since 5 for my 510 appointment and guess what? Yup still sat here 

shrinkwrap

20 minutes wait - FFS you can't be very ill if you're complaining about that. 

mikeyrob73

Still waiting lol 

and I'm NOT that ill that was my issue in the first place 

mikeyrob73

Still waiting :-(

Sambostar

holnrew said:

I could only get an appointment with a nurse practitioner today. Had the worst sore throat of my life the last few days. I'm worried it won't get taken seriously

That's going around at the moment, it clears up after a few days, then the cold starts.

It also pisses me off that you can only be consulted about one thing, especially if two things may be related and could lead to a better diagnosis, not that GP's know anything without consulting google.  You can't even see a specialist without a referral from a GP.  I think the whole system is designed to make people die quicker to be honest and even if they are only on £65k, GP's need a fucking wake up..

professorben

guitarfishbay said:

mikeyrob73 said:

Ok so i need to see a doctor, nothing urgent but an ongoing issue, called this morning
" can i have an appointment" 
" is it Urgent" 
" not really urgent" 
" next appointment is in 2 weeks, but i can get a doctor to call you back today to speak to you" 

WTF !! why is it so difficult to actually just make an appointment? 
surely its just doubling a doctors workload that they have to call me, then they have to see me? if they call me they will then ask to see me today, which means i have to speak to the doctor twice today, when all i want is an appointment sometime in the next 7 days. 

The issue is supply and demand.

There's plenty of demand but only a finite number of appointments.  You'll be one of 1-2,000+ patients per GP depending on area.  That's a lot of potential people to need an appointment.

What's happened here is triage, and if it's working correctly it'll make it more likely you can get an appointment than not.  

The receptionist asked if it is urgent, if it was they'd either try to get you seen urgently by a GP or if appropriate either tell you to attend A+E or even call the ambulance for you if there was a reasonable chance you'd be unable to get to A+E under your own steam (e.g. possible stroke/heart attack symptoms).  You were offered an appointment which is better than some places who will tell you to keep calling back when the phone lines open in the morning (only to miss out continually), and were offered triage by the Dr.  If in 2 weeks you're fine you could always cancel the appointment, or if you got worse you could call again.

The doctor would be calling you to triage how soon they'd need to see you, or if the problem could be dealt with over the phone (as it can be in some cases).  

There's no perfect system, perfect receptionist (this one was a bit harsh), perfect doctor...  but better that the surgeries try to prioritise appointments than they just let it get booked up according to what people want as not everything is urgent.

What I'd recommend is checking if your surgery does online booking, there can be slots that are available purely for people who book online.

I'm in the fortunate position of having both, GP, Walk in centre and A&E within a few mins drive, however, my GP has this Triage system, meaning I can't get an appt because I'm reliant on a locum phoning me to 'discuss' my needs, the walk in centre is full of people who can't be bothered going through the GP system and because I live in Peterborough A&E is full of either methed up Chavs wielding knives or Romanian building labourers who have nailed their hands together again...........

My old doctors had a first come first served system, I never waited more than a day for an appt.

Emp_Fab

TheBlueWolf said:

My current surgery is the rare one that doesn't treat patients like scum who are wasting the good surgeries time, turning up being all ill and shit. I've had a fair few like the OP though.

But people ARE scum who waste the good surgeries' time - well, a lot of them are.  You may not be, but I think people who are quick to criticise the reception staff aren't fully aware of the number of complete selfish tools that are out there in the general public.  I spend a lot of time in GP land as part of my job and the number of times I've witnessed staff being treated like scum by patients, particularly on the phone, is countless.  I wouldn't last two minutes in the job.  I swear, I would have told fifty people to fuck off, deleted the medical records of half of them out of spite and punched three in the face before lunchtime.

Yes, there are awkward staff too - they come from the same pool of selfish tools that the rest of us do.

However - the big question is this;  if so many people are bitching about the NHS, why the hell did you all vote for a party that wants shot of it ?

mikeyrob73

well after sitting waitiing for almost an hour last night in the waiting room, and watching one person niggling away at the receptionist because he didnt like the message she had passed on from the doctor, i get why they are bastards now. i would have dragged that guy into the carpark and kicked the shite out of him for speaking to me that way. 

RocknRollDave

Emp_Fab said:

TheBlueWolf said:

My current surgery is the rare one that doesn't treat patients like scum who are wasting the good surgeries time, turning up being all ill and shit. I've had a fair few like the OP though.

But people ARE scum who waste the good surgeries' time - well, a lot of them are.  You may not be, but I think people who are quick to criticise the reception staff aren't fully aware of the number of complete selfish tools that are out there in the general public.  I spend a lot of time in GP land as part of my job and the number of times I've witnessed staff being treated like scum by patients, particularly on the phone, is countless.  I wouldn't last two minutes in the job.  I swear, I would have told fifty people to fuck off, deleted the medical records of half of them out of spite and punched three in the face before lunchtime.

Yes, there are awkward staff too - they come from the same pool of selfish tools that the rest of us do.

However - the big question is this;  if so many people are bitching about the NHS, why the hell did you all vote for a party that wants shot of it ?

I don't entirely disagree with you about the hassle that staff get, but we need to remember that when people are in and/ or in pain, their stress levels go through the roof and they operate on a much shorter fuse and are less patient.
I read an article today saying people get into more arguments at work when they are tired because they lack the energy to use the self-control they usually adopt to stop them saying inappropriate/ unhelpful/ confrontational things. That is after one night's bad sleep. Lack of sleep must be quite a common thing for ill people, so factor in the pain too and ....Well, look, it obviously doesn't make it right  but staff need to be more adept at handling stressed people, or at least more aware that that is what they are doing. It's an oft-neglected skill.