Doctor's fucking punctuality

[AnotherTimeMaybe]

So went to doctor today and he was late again! Previous patient came late so he couldn't just chuck him out and he took me half hour later ,I was late for school pick up ended up paying late care
I don't get it, why are they allowed to be late we are supposed to accept it or leave and miss the appointment for which I had to take day off! And if we are late they wait for 5 minutes and then you go back to the bottom of the queue
AIBU ? Is this a life sentence?

My first flowers on mumsnet. Thank you [bakeoff]

Go and live in the south of Spain for a while.
UK doctors/hospital appointments will seem startlingly prompt forever after.
I think my 'best' ever was the 4 hour wait for my first scan while pregnant, no chairs anywhere to sit on, and temperatures around 35C. (Not to knock the Spanish healthcare system which at least pre-crisis was excellent, well funded, and caring, but they don't do running to time!!!)

My GP spent an extra fifteen minutes in an appointment with me when I went in with my second miscarriage, to make sure I left the surgery with an appointment with the early pregnancy unit, and didn't have to wait for a call back. There was someone complaining in the waiting room about having waited to see the doctor who I had just been crying with. I wanted to give them a kick in the shins.

If the doctor is running late, it is because they are providing the best care they can for them people they saw previously. You are there for health reasons, and so is everyone else.

have some more musical I appreciate all you do

Not a GP but I'm a HCP.
Yes, I can tell the time thanks {hmm] anf though my first appointment is 9.00 or 9.10 depending on the clinic, I'm there at 8.00/8.10 setting up and going through my list.

I get late patients
I get patient who take ages to get ready, get undressed/dressed/find their card/the medication update that we ask them every visit.
I get patient who need letters written, X-Ray, antibiotics,admissions
The ones who turn up the wrong day/time/place and I need to find out where they should be.
I get patients who don't bring the information they are asked to bring so instead of it being filled out in a form, I need to go through it all with them
I have had patients hammer on my door and be verbally abusive if I'm running late.
I have the ones who pop along to "just ask you something"
I have the ones who phone the office to say they'll be late and are still going to turn up (even though they're told they might not/will not be seen, because phoming stops time doesn't it)

And when they are loudly muttering outside (I can hear them) and my patient who is in a wheelchair,or on sticks,or a young adult with a disability leaves the room, I hope they take note and feel ashamed for whinging.

And I have collegues who refuse point blank to see latecomers , so if I run late I invariably get "Oh well I was 5 minutes late and got sent away"
I would dearly love to say:
"Oh, I;m 20 minutes late, you can refuse to see me "

And my collegues who write "Clinic running late, do XYZ next time" especially if they book them into my clinic so know they're putting the extra work on me.

Only 18 years till I can retire

My Dr is usually late, sometimes 10 mins, sometimes up to an hour. Its been like that for the 20 years I've been with them, so I can't blame the govt.
Its just a fact of life, if they get a more complex case in, or even just a chatty patient, it has a knock on effect.
Ive been with a routine complaint (wheezy chest), and still been in there 30 mins later while the Dr deliberated sending me to hospital (severe bronchitis), I reckon most people will cause the Dr to be late at some point in their lives.

As a patient I have experienced arriving at my GPs for a 9am appointment (I don;t bother getting there too early, but 10 minutes early is ok)
GP arrived dead on 9am then spent 15 minutes discussing home visits (mainly ones that he wasn't going to do and book them into clinic)

At the Dentist , I had an 11.20 to have 2 teeth out (big ones so not a quick in-and-out-check up) . Still waiting at 12.05 , the 12.10 came in and said "How long will I need to wait?" Rant Rant.

Bloody ages, I thought, even if they do my injections and get me to wait in the waiting room, there were another two before her.

I might have let her go first if she'd been nice (I had the day off). But she wasn't. So I didn't.

As a patient I have a knitting project just for waiting at doctors' appointments. I found taking a book too bitty. I used to complain after an hour of waiting but it never did any good. So now I just make sure I take the whole afternoon or whole morning off work, and never arrange anything else on the same day. The knitting calms me down and helps me feel I am doing something productive with my time.
The worst used to be the 2 pm appointment on a school day. I would arrive early and not make any alternative school pick up arrangements for the children and then get really upset when I was still waiting to be seen at 3.30.
I no longer ask relatives or friends to come with me as it is a waste of their time.
I no longer mind waiting because I've adapted my expectations and because like someone upthread the doctor has saved my life at least twice.

As a doctor I have learned to be much better at time management as I've got more senior. I establish the numbers I'm prepared to see and the time allocated with admin in advance. I read the notes and get results outstanding in advance. I get to clinic and set up early. I do not chat to anyone on the way to clinic. I tell the patient/family how much time there is for the appointment at the start of the consultation. I time myself to be halfway though the consult halfway through the appointment time and if the patient is still talking I tell them we are halfway through the time and I need to examine them. I have developed communication skills to communicate difficult news in the time available and if the time is too short I book in another appointment or a telephone consultation to follow up. Patients have been very complimentary. Admin staff are less stressed too. Incidentally I do not allow the patients to have their mobile phone on during the consultation. If a person is too busy to attend to the doctor during a consultation they get politely asked to leave.

Clinics regularly running late are a strain for everyone and doctors can and should be better at sticking to time.

YABVVU. Most of them will miss their lunches and breaks to try and catch up and many won't even get the chance to go to the loo for the majority of the day as a result of being so stretched by the cuts and 10 minute appointment system. So just don't book appointments for times when you can't afford to run late. Or arrange someone else to cover for you as a contingency. Medical care is not a 9-5, 10 minute slot thing and I am grateful for th Drs who take the time to really see me as a person.

But if it happens all the time absolutely 100% of the time why don't they allow for more time in the first place

We need more than 10 minutes. I'd love to have 15. But then I'd see four patients in an hour, not six. Where are you going to find 50% more GPs to see the extra people? Believe me, your GP was not surfing mumsnet or making personal phone calls while you were waiting.

I ran an hour late in my afternoon GP surgery a few weeks ago. Couldnt be helped, I had a chest pain walk in, a child take a febrile convulsion (also a walk in), and the other two extras which had already been booked into my tea break who needed seen that day. I promise we dont run late on purpose or because we are sat messing around on mumsnet or drinking tea.

Most of the patients I saw that afternoon were very understanding of the situation, especially the ones that saw the child fitting in the waiting room. My last patient however waited the hour, came in, shouted at me about it and then decided they didnt want the appointment afterall and would rebook 'with a better GP'.

I was trying my best.

I think you need to expect some degree of lateness due to emergencies, but we were once kept waiting for a long time as the receptionist had forgotten to update the system to say that we were there 😡😡😡 she didn't admit it but I saw her hand surreptitiously reach for the computer mouse... Then we were miraculously seen straight away!

You see although I can understand why you take that approach funny as a patient/carer I would get really annoyed if I felt like I was being rushed in that way. Although I am sure it always happens subconsciously I don't want to be made to feel like I am being timed and therefore some sort of inconvenience!

People do seem to have forgotten, though, that this isn't exactly new - 20 years ago, it was similar (though slightly easier to get a GP appointment): I used to dread being in my doctor at the time's last appointment, as I knew that it would be after 7 by the time I was seen. Even worse for her, though, who presumably then had to finish up her notes, get things organised, do things she hadn't done in the day - an only then go home to her family. It's not as simple as evil Tories hammering the NHS (and no, I didn't vote for them!): there's not enough GPs, a dramatically rising population, more IDs than previously (eg TB), still the same old idiots who want anti-biotics for a cold - and still doctors trying to treat their patients with respect and courtesy, even though they know they're already running late.

If the GP is late due to long coffee breaks and chatting YANBU. If it's just other patients YABU. They don't run late in private land because appointments are longer and they charge a fortune. Take a book and allow up to an hour

Agree the nhs needs more gps but the government won't pay for more. An ageing and increasing population means more health centres need building as you can't set up as a single handed GP any more

I do find it annoying when the GP or hospital clinic is running late, but I don't complain as I understand why it happens, and at times I've been that patient who's needed extra time. I find Drs who run late tend to be apologetic, and then give you the time you need.

sirzy I know what you mean, though most patients have busy lives too and don't want to be at the doctors' surgery all day so appreciate a to-the-point consultation. That said, I too run late if the consultation needs more time, but I've found I run late a lot less now that I'm senior and better at communicating and more firm at not letting people (not emergencies) make me late for clinic.

Once a long time ago, a colleague phoned in sick so I offered to do her clinic and my own side by side rather than cancel her clinic, thinking that patients had waited a long time to be seen. Instead of appreciating that they were seen, many complained they were seen late. Now I hardly ever cover for sick colleagues and just get on with my own work in a timely way. The department chooses to have a longer waiting list rather than try and fit people into an unrealistic short consultation time.

If you've paid so much tax presumably you have a high income OP? Just go privately.

It is irritating to have to wait, but as everyone has explained, there are usually good reasons for it. The only time I have ever found myself annoyed (silently) is with my midwife who was chronically late because she spends so much time talking about herself - way beyond anything that might be considered rapport building. She was unrepentant about making me (and everyone else) wait, suggesting that my work would just have to put up with it. It wasn't screwing the man though, my work load remains the same regardless of when I turn up. I just tried to take non confidential work with me to do in the waiting room.

As someone whose then 15 month old had a seizure during a gp appointment, I appreciate doctors giving patients their time and not rushing them out the door, so don't mind waiting.

They run late because they have too many people to see in too little time, and the only alternative is to compromise care. We have an NHS free at the point of use, which on an absolute shoestring provides mostly adequate, and sometimes excellent care. I don't think people appreciate that until they live somewhere that doesn't, tbh.

Things are worse, but mostly in terms of not being able to get an appointment easily, if at all. The waits if you did get one are, I think, inevitable - a doctor will always spend the time they need to on previous patients, and that's as it should be IMO.

What I don't get, and I'd really like it if someone could explain it to me, is...
Given it's been agreed above gps are often running late, for understandable reasons, and they can't reduce the number of patients they're due to see to allow for this (as this would have a knock on effect to waiting lists/times) - given this, why do they mind so much if there is a missed appointment? Doesnt this give them a chance to catch up?
(Just to clarify - I'd never miss an appt, just musing).

I completely relate to the thought process of "if they see me late, tough on me but if I am late, it's cancelled" but as others have said, their system is made of a lot more variables and I would rather be seen late than someone else not get treated properly.

My doctor is often two hours late but she's a fantastic doctor, very thoughtful and caring and I know she would and has taken extra time with me when I really needed her.

I try to give every patient the time they need.
It is the nature of people's needs that they don't fit 10 minute appointments.

Maybe you should read the recent thread about what doctors do with their time?