to think that doctors' receptionists are hated on here?

[lemontwist]

Okay so I may be a little biased (because I am one) but generally we work hard, often bend over backwards to juggle the needs of the patients with the demands of the doctors and other surgery staff and have to be constantly polite despite often being looked down on and spoken to like crap.
Certainly in my surgery we do everything we can to fit people in if they feel they need an urgent appointment. Yesterday the phone never stopped and there was standing room only in the waiting area at times. My colleague had a patient shout at her while doing everything she could to help him and remaining polite.
We get ridiculously busy at this time of year because we close for a whole twodays. AIBU just to ask you to cut us some slack and be polite back?

Works both ways! I'm lucky our ones are lovely and helpful but I've been in other surgeries where they are awful, obtuse and downright rude!

You must work at my surgery. All the receptionists are really helpful.
I have been to places where they are horrible.

Mine are lovely. As is the 24 hour telephone booking appointment system where you don't have to speak to a person.

I work in a clinical environment so i know how they feel. If they don't have an appointment, They don't have an appointment!

I'm lucky now as the ones at my surgery are fantastic but dear God some of them I have encountered have been utter dragons!

I've just finished writing my doctors surgery a Christmas card/thank-you because they are wonderful, and I thought I should tell them so .

Everybody in just about every job you can think of moans about the way they're treated from time to time.

If you're talking about MN, I'd say shop assistants probably get a far worse press than Doctor's receptionists.

There's one ogre at mine and one really helpful, lovely lady. If I get the ogre I hang up. If it's the other lady I'm always exceptionally polite and grateful for her help.

She's better than the bloody doctors to be honest who are universally useless. I'm not being mean - my cousin agrees and she's a GP herself!

I am in awe of how my local receptionist stay so calm. Some of the patients are unbelievably rude. I think they're fab.

Ours are brilliant, and can never help enough. The ones at my parents surgery can be a bit terse, but have been fabulous in dealing with them, their many, many, appointments, and the emergencies.

I used to be one and I was lovely and helpful (preens). Took more abuse in that job than I've had in a lifetime, usually from people who were as nice as pie to the doctors.

Oh and Teachers....they tend to get bashed a lot.

But they say no appointments at all until next week then all of a sudden have appointments available. That's the frustrating side!!

YANBU

YABU. Just because you do your job properly doesn't mean they all do.

I'm sick of missing prescription orders (five have gone missing in the last month) or the lack of letters for certain appointments or the demanding to know what the appointments for over the phone. However that is just DS's GP practice and I have made several complaints about the support/admin staff not doing their job properly.

My GP practice has amazing receptionists but the doctors are rubbish. so it's a trade off. It isn't easy to deal with grumpy/difficult receptionists when you are already ill though.

I am happy that you are nice.
I have had so many dealings with unpleasant receptionists that I can't count them.

What do you think makes receptionists drop basic politeness and turn on perfectly pleasant patients? It happens so often, there must be a trigger.

There is one particular patronising bitch at our surgery. I hate her. I hate the way she talks, I hate the way she makes me repeat myself in Received Pronunciation and then once more because she can't understand me. Then I hate the shifty glances she gives me when finding my details. I hate her. Hate hate hate.

The receptionists at my GP surgery are lovely, always friendly and helpful, I dropped off a little present for each of them yesterday plus a big box of chocolates for them to share.

My last surgery was so different, the receptionists were rude and difficult and wanted to know why you wanted to see the dr, if you didn't tell them you didn't get an appointment.

Our doctors receptionist thinks she knows better than the doctors...

Had a doctors appointment asked about a completely unrelated issue and doctor recommends booking in to see the nurse.

Ring up to book in with nurse - receptionist asks what the problem is then tells me that the doctor would be better suited to handle it - I tell the receptionist that I'd already discussed it with the doctor and they said book in with the nurse - I get a very snotty response and the latest possible nurses appointment she can give me...

Turned up for my appointment with the nurse - receptionist says oh your here to see the nurse, have a seat she'll be with you soon. 20 minutes later the nurse calls me in and apologises as she hadn't been told I'd turned up so had started doing other things... I in turn told the nurse that the receptionist was well aware that I'd turned up 5 minutes early for my appointment and that it wasn't the nurse who should be apologising.

Health visitors are surely the most slagged off on mumsnet.

My best freinds mum is our doctors receptionist so i cant slag her off

YABU. Unfortunately the vast majority of GP receptionists are not nice, pleasant and efficient; I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of helpful receptionists I've encountered in all my dealings with GP surgeries. The rest were surly, unhelpful, often downright rude. You may be one of the good ones, but you're not the norm unfortunately - so yes, most of us do have a lot of negative feelings where doctors' receptionists are concerned because we've had to deal with all the crap ones.

As for any job, you have some nice people and some not so nice people.

You also have some nice patients and not so nice patients.

And you also have nice patients that are getting extremely frustrated by the system and unfortunately, the people who bear it all are the front line people ie the receptionist.

You also have patients that have been treated badly by another receptionists (or several) are then sent back to their GP just to have to start the whole explanation again and have some one saying 'No you can't' wo having any medical expertise to judge whether they do need that appointment quickly or not.

The reality is, if you have something not quite right today and you know that next week there is hardly any chance of you seeing a GP (and the week after, you will get tense as to whether you will or won't see a GP. Especially because you will be very lucky to see someone today or tomorrow and that you will have to 'prove' one way or the other that you really need that appointment, explain your medical condition to someone who should not take that sort of decision, someone you don't know and perhaps about something you don't really want to talk about with strangers.

So perhaps the answer is to ask both sides to realize how difficult the situation is for the other and for both sides to give the other a bit of slack.

I love mine. You do hear some right horror stories on here though.

Mymum was one, and she was a cow