I upset a lady at GP surgery today

Mine too.

do you think its possible she had dementia or soemthing like that. people get very confused with that.

Presumably because some older people have cognitive issues, hearing issues or need support with sorting things like medication and require a little further time to complete tasks and errands, which would be relevant in this case as the lady with the prescription issue may well have benefited from such support.

People seem to lose all concept of time when in a queue. I work in a shop and the amount of people who say I've been waiting 10 minutes when they've been waiting less then 2.

It’s the same at the bank. The old people filling up the queues checking their balance. This is why they are shutting them down. I don’t know what they will do when they do.

God forbid people be “kind” to the elderly. It wasn’t her fault she wasn’t being sufficiently helped by the receptionist, who should have been able to signpost her elsewhere if not answer the query directly.

I mean I get why it was frustrating for you and everyone else but I still feel bad for the lady.

imo it’s good manners to pretend you can’t hear the conversations with the receptionist in the doctor queue .

I wondered that too.

Well the receptionist could have said:

"I'm so sorry nobody informed you of the change, Mrs Banbury. I'll pop you down for a phonecall with the Dr so they can go over the changes and make sure you're happy."

Bye, bye, Mrs Banbury because she got what she needed.

Same

Yeah me too.

And I'd still like to know how everyone got in to see the GP without checking in.

Or was the GP just sat there twiddling their thumbs, waiting for the patients to come in?

If she's been prescribed the wrong med it might need a very urgent appointment.

Why are people asking the OP about a check in screen as if she has some sort of say in whether they have one or control over whether it’s working? This place is bizarre sometimes. ‘Is there no check in screen?’ ‘Yes there is, but I fancied standing there like a lemon for half an hour.’🙄

I stood in a queue in Boots today in similar circumstances. I was there for my flu jab, but there was a man having a discussion about his prescription. There was some sort of mix up. All very civilised, but never ending. And other staff kept appearing, joining in, then buggering off again like the shopkeeper in Mr Ben (I am old😅) I waited almost 15 minutes before I finally managed to interrupt the conversation to say why I was there. I had my flu jab, came out and they were still there. Still talking. So that was about 25 minutes and counting. They’re probably still there now.

I think I know this lady 😄

I find it very difficult to believe this woman was allowed to hog the receptionist for fully 25 minutes whilst a queue formed behind her.

In any case, OP was unnecessarily bullish. There were other, better ways to make the point.

I think you showed immense patience.
By the 5th ‘but nobody told me’ I would have had to say something- probably pre empted by an eye roll, a muttered ‘Jesus Christ -how much longer’ and then an ‘excuse me -is there someone else who can deal with this lady as there’s now 12 of us waiting and at this rate we will still be here when you close’.
However, I live in rural Yorkshire so would probably have been beaten to it by someone else with less patience than me.
Frankly I don’t care if she was elderly -it’s a doctors surgery, no one is there for fun and there could have be3n ill people standing waiting to be seen.
She was entitled & selfish.
Receptionist should have nipped it in the bud mind.

So imagine you're the lady, you're confused because your medication has been changed and you don't know why so you're probably feeling stressed. And then when you're trying to find out answers you're not getting any. And then someone is very rude and makes you feel belittled.
What you did was just make the ladies situation so much worse by how you handled it.
You could have said something simple like sorry to interrupt but can i just check in please, don't want to be missing my appointment and that way you'd have got the same result with making someone else feel crappy

OP said it was broken.

She wasn’t “wasting time”, the receptionist was handling it badly and should have taken her details and offered a call back once she was able to provide an answer. The woman had to speak to the receptionist. I’d assume she didn’t expect the receptionist to know the answer but she’s the gatekeeper to finding out the information. You have no idea what medication she’s on or the side effects, or her history so there may be a totally legitimate reason to ask.

You don’t check in via a touch screen? Your surgery is way behind the times😳

Ah, good on you OP. Prob a little matter of fact for a lot of people to handle, lol, but it's true. If late checking in, you lose your apt time (well, at my surgery anyway) and some people's need to see the doc may be greater than 25+mins of chat on desk over medicine the receptionist had no power over.
The receptionist needs to go to brusque Gp receptionist school!

Why didn’t the receptionist just book another appointment with her ? I can see both sides like why should you have to wait while that was going on? But at the same time why wasn’t she given an answer or solution to her query ? It’s a bit rude but at the same time these places would drive you nuts sometimes.

It was kind of rude but I don't think you had much choice. The receptionist should not have let it go on that long.

No one is "the queen of the GP reception", but it's ridiculous to wait so long because people are wasting time.

Any other place, you can just say you are going elsewhere, it's a GP, you are stuck but no reason to waste your time, and if you are unwell, you can't just stand there for 10mn.