Mumsnet Talk

Depends on appt. we ran an antenatal diabetes clinic in our outpatients that was only on a certain day, as it was the only time both the diabetes consultant and obstetrics consultant were available together.

I'm not pregnant but I work 4 days. Any drs/ opticians appointments I make for my day off. However, seeing a midwife at a specific day/ time is hard to negotiate as others have said so shes nbu.

Her manager should be checking why she is doing this. It does sound as though she may be taking the mickey.

There are ALWAYS options re routine midwifery visits. You can have all your care at the hospital. You can go to another surgery. In our area (I know we are fortunate) you can go to one of two healthcare centres instead.

There might be a modicum of huffage momentarily, but it is far from impossible to find alternatives.

Obstetric diabetic appointments or other specialist stuff is different.

But I expect the OP colleague is the sort who will want to do weekly antenatal yoga from 20 weeks because it happens only to be available on her rostered working day.

YABU. You don't normally get any choice in appointment time/day. I felt guilty about this when I was pg as I wanted to arrange them outside of my teaching hours, but it wasn't possible.

You are possibly YABU. She should arrange otherwise if she can but she may not have had the choice. When I was pregnant, the local midwife only did appointments on a Wednesday. There was no way to get an appointment on any other day. Your colleague may be in a similar situation.

Yanbu takes the piss a bit

Hmm, depends on what the appointments are for and when the clinics are on. TBH, I had the choice of a couple of days for general appts. when I was pregnant. Our surgery is very small too. I would be surprised if this day is the only day she can go. If I couldn't make one of the two days available to me, they offered me an appt. at a different clinic a short drive away.

YABU - A couple of years ago it looked like we were moving to Manchester. I was shocked that MW appointments held at each of the local dr offices were scheduled for certain days that never changed and that they gave timeframes rather than strict appointment times. I doubt things have changed.

I work two days a week and have never asked for time off for appointments even if I am entitled.
What I have done on the odd occasion is to swap my working days so that I can keep an appointment that was unavoidable.

Presumably the colleague can't switch her working days round if she's a part time teacher. Whether she's taking the piss or not entirely depends on whether the appointment could've been switched. There might be some choice in the matter, might be none. So without more information, impossible to tell who's BU.

If it is possible for her to choose which day she has the appointments, then yes, she should arrange them for one of her days off work.

However, this isn't always possible. I returned to work part time after having DS. I'm now pregnant with DC2. The midwife who comes to our GP surgery is only there on one particular day of the week - one of my work days. The receptionist told me that I had a choice between making an appointment for that day of the week or never seeing a midwife.

I'm also on consultant led care, because of problems with my first pregnancy - the midwife has put me on a consultant list on a non-work day at my request - but she then went on to say that most of the consultants only do clinics on one day of the week, and if the problems in my first pregnancy happen again, I'll be transferred to the consultant specialising in foetal medicine. That consultant is the one I had first time round, and I know from my first pregnancy that her clinics are on one of my work days. Hopefully this pregnancy will run smoother than the first one, but if problems do recur then I'll have no choice about taking consultant appointments in work time.

Clinics are usually only run on particular days

My ante natal appointments HAD to be on a Tuesday afternoon. YABU

Oh, FFS, she is proper taking the piss. She works one day a week, and her appointments are magically all on that day? If she had any commitment to her job whatsoever, she would move her working hours to a different day. She doesn't care about her job, her pupils or her colleagues. As soon as she gets back from ML, poor performance the bitch and get her out. I would.

My midwife appointments were only available on Tuesday mornings, and with hospital appointments, you pretty much have to take the date you are given, so don't have an option. In my case, all my non hospital appointmentments fell on my day off.

YANBU! I used to cringe that I had to leave at 3:30 to get to the last appointment of the day at my midwife. I also usually had to wait an hour when I got there

Honestly all the posters prepared to have drs receptionists tell them it was that day only, or never see a midwife. Rubbish.

You can go to a different surgery, or health centre, or to the hospital.

If you only work term time you have plenty of opportunity to see a midwife in holidays. If you work school hours you can at least try to make your appointments at the end of the day.

If you ask, properly, like you expect to be taken seriously, you can usually be seen at another time for routine stuff.

The midwife at our surgery has appointments on a Wednesday and Friday morning. She is at other surgeries throughout the rest of the week.
I went to different surgeries/clinics quite a few times because of work.

Also, why does she need to take the whole day off?

I think that it's unreasonable to expect a woman to change her GP for the convenience of her employer over midwifery appointments. And the appointments are time sensitive so can't just be lumped into the holidays like a smear test or dental check up.

This is a big issue for jobs like teaching where you can't catch up the work at another time as the timetable is fixed. For many jobs you can just move a few hours around and it is less of an issue. The flexibility required of GPs in offering evening or weekend appointments doesn't seem to have filtered through into things like MW appointments.

At my gp the mw is only there one day a week so you don't get a choice.

I'm a TA. I work 5 days a week. I have to take time off to transport my children to hospital and dental appointments. It most certainly isn't possible to negotiate specific days or times, otherwise you have to wait months. (I do request to be seen either first thing or last thing on a clinic,especially if it is a hospital appointment...nearest hospital 20 miles away.Sometimes I'm lucky. )
I also work half an hour early most mornings and after school has finished, so that no-one can accuse me of not making time up.

Are we sure she's seeing a midwife and not a particular consultant? I can envisage circumstances in which a person who thought she couldn't have DC, say for health reasons, might need quite specialist care during pregnancy. I don't think OP is particularly BU, but the posters assuming the colleague is having midwife care are.

well. On principle, I'd say YANBU. I would expect someone who had other options for appointment days to schedule them on days she wasn't working.

But, as many people have already said, the midwife at my GP only works on Tuesdays. So if Tuesday was my day at work, it would be unfortunate for everyone. I would personally make an effort to get an appt later in the day, if it were possible, but that's just me.