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?

What do doctors do all day?

I was once the patient who held everyone up. What was booked as a 10 minute appointment turned into a 50 minute drama ending up with me being sent to hospital. I came out in floods of tears and to top it all loads of people were glaring at me and one even muttered something about how long she'd had to wait :(

Presumably my poor doctor ended up having to see everyone who was waiting and work late.

I know its irritating but just be gratefful it wasn't you causing the hold up

YABVU

My clinic (though not a GP) ran very late today because one of the patients turned out to have a serious problem which required me to break very bad- and llife changing news- to the patient and then arrange immediate admission to the ward from clinic.

What would you expect I do in that situation- chuck them out of the consulting room after their allotted time ran out, regardless? Imagine if you, or a loved one, were in that position- what would you want?

I imagine you would want the doctor to spend the time needed to get to the bottom of their problem/take time to break bad news sensitively and thoroughly/ explain proposed treatment etc.

The reason you can't be seen if you turn up late is that if everybody who turned up late was seen in order, the clinic or GP surgery list would be running even later. If I am running late, I will usually try and squeeze people in, but some days that is just not possible if they are very late.

GP's have 10 minutes per patient- that is not a lot of time if the patient has a complex problem, or if it bad news or if the patient is unwell. I understand from friends who are GP's that it's not unusual for patient's to come with a number of problems and expect them all to be dealt with in 10 minutes. It's not unusual for patients to come in with one problem, then mention something else which the Dr thinks "I need to deal with that as it could be serious". Again- in that situation think what you would want the Dr to do if it was you or your loved one? Deal with the problem or ignore it so they run to time?

I understand that it can be annoying when the clinic or GP surgery is running late and you have things to do, but more often than not it can't be helped. Have a bit of patience- and some good grace!

I'm a doctor and I bloody hate running late. I certainly try to run on time or near time, believe me, but the workload is very much in excess of the time available, and the job is inherently unpredictable. I am really disliking my job lately, and a big part of that is having people angry at me for things that are out of my control, like running late, or long waits for appointments.

I am a patient too and I also find it annoying to sit in a waiting room for ages, and to have my day disrupted by lateness,

However I would much rather be in the waiting room than be the doctor seeing a succession of irritated people at 10 minute intervals, many feeling that because they've waited so long they should have the opportunity to bring up several problems 'whilst I'm here' and they should get that dubious antibiotic prescription or unnecessary sick note to justify their wasted time. I hate apologising endlessly for running late when it's bloody well not my fault (but I do).

It really does bug me that the system is designed that you often run late, then it is the individual HCPs who face the criticism and complaints from patients.

I always assume I'll have to wait for my appointments and if I don't it's a nice surprise. My GPs surgery are gray and if you have concerns about your kids or anything else serious will squeeze you in. Id rather wait than know that someone else suffered greater pain so I could have a routine appointment.

Your a right mug if you thought you'd be in and out at your appointed time. Appointments are in 10 min slots. People should book doubles when they have more than one thing to discuss, but don't. Some people end up taking much longer than 10 mins due to all the reasons already given. Never think you'll be in there on time!

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

why do they mind so much if there is a missed appointment? Doesnt this give them a chance to catch up?

I do find that people miss the early morning appointments most often, when you don't need to catch up yet.

I think individual doctors are often very pleased to have a bonus catch up slot, but at a practice level it is really frustrating to see lots of slots wasted.

I'm not a GP but work in a hospital. Our fracture clinics always run late. Why? Sometimes it's because we've had a lot of admissions overnight or a particular patient needs some extra time. Most of the time though it's because our appointment slots are ridiculous. New patients are given 10 minutes to be seen, follow ups 5 mins. So that's 5 or 10 mins to see a patient, get history, examine, repeat X-rays, explain results and for some explain the procedure which we advise. Oh and dictate the clinic letter. It's just not physically possible. Even the consultants have very little say about appointment lengths and we've complained and complained to no avail.

I must say I do appreciate that of course it's difficult to wait for so long, having waited umpteen hours for my obstetric appointments.. However I won't shuffle a patient out the door just to fit a timetable decided by managers, I'll take as long as is reasonable to make sure I've covered everything important.

Surprisingly in hospital a missed appt only saves a few minutes: I still need to check why the person was being seen, whether they still need seeing, do the paperwork associated with that, dictate and in the case of children sometimes escalate to safeguarding teams if there's concern or the child is looked after (in which case it can be a half hour sort out).

I try very hard to make my (hospital) clinics run to time. But ward patients get sick, juniors need help, patients turn up late, patients need interpreters- we often don't hear about this until they arrive right before their appointment time and sometimes patients have complex problems which need more time. Like a previous poster today I had to arrange the admission of a patient from the clinic, arrange investigations, talk to bed managers and speak with the on call team. This obviously delayed the next few appointments and delayed me getting home too. It happens. I've been the patient who waits in the waiting room for hours at times, and I've also been the patient who takes up far longer than my allocated time.

Our practice is short of GPs, we have advertised and had no applications at all as we are not in a "naice" area We have a deprived and largely elderly population, are booked up weeks in advance and frequently run late. Two more GPs are close to retirement and one has a job offer in NZ which offers good salary, 10-12 patients each morning and afternoon, no home visits and minimal paperwork so no contest. How we will manage then I don't know. I don't think patients have any idea how close to crumbling the NHS is

So conflict of interest declared, I'm a GP.
It's a matter of fact, we don't plan to run late. I arrive routinely 40 minutes before my first patient to get my mountain of paperwork started. Having dropped my daughter at nursery at 7:30am. My first patient is at 8:30am. Late patients make us late. Equally, we have 10 minutes per patient. Patients tend to bring multiple problems. That 10 minutes includes getting the patient from the waiting room and writing up notes. Elderly patients take a while to get from A to B and get dressed/undressed. Problems are getting more and more complex as treatment gets more complicated and patients expectations and demands increase. Demand for appointments has gone up 1/3 in the last year. Often for trivial things that a patient could have self managed or allowed to resolve. More and more work is being pushed into general practice from secondary care. This work is unfunded i.e. no more resources or money is given to keep up with this demand.
Morale is rock bottom. Patients are often rude. We try are very best to do our best for all our patients in an NHS that is sinking and before long probably won't exist. When you are paying to see your GP in the future and everything has to be paid for that you are used to getting for free perhaps waiting to see your NHS GP wasn't so bad.
Apologies for the rant...I rushed to collect my daughter at 6:30pm, last as usual to be collected and have only just finished working on practice/patient related work at nearly 10pm.
We work hard. Please remember that some of us are mummies too. At the heart of all we do is care for our patients, frequently at the detriment to our own family life/work life balance.
Thank you for reading.

My dad very suddenly after a complication following a minor op. For several days it was touch and go but the we were told it was just a matter of time. During those days the consultant dealing with him said he was available for us any time. All we had to do was ask and if he wasn't in surgery he was with us usually in 15 mins. We were in shock and had so many questions he had endless patience and time for us. His clinics etc must have been running so late but he was helping our family through a totally devastating period. I'd like to think anyone inconvenienced those days would have understood had they known why.

The time he spent with us and the feeling he cared helped our whole family so much

YAB totally U!

If you're late, then the doctors working day is also running late, but hey it's about you not them! God forbid they have a family life etc.

Sidge is totally right.

Incidentally my father died in the doctors surgery, took two GPs out of the clinic trying to revive him. Bet that pissed everyone off with the late appointments.

why do they mind so much if there's a missed appointment
Because the NHS gets scrutinised for wasted appointments.
Because if someone has made an appointment (and they are sent a reminder text) I expect them to turn up.
Because I can't start the next patient until I've given 10 minutes 'grace' and the next one might not be there yet.
I can't even get involved in something on my PC if I have to keep a lookout for a late patient.

And if they don't arrive, I phone them (takes time) hear their excuse (usually forgot/mixed up day) have to send a letter (time again) and input onto the notes.

We all have protocols to follow.
If the patient is Vunerable, we need to phone the Carer and otify the GP. Again time involved.

This thread is typical of the way people see Drs as a commodity these days and treat them badly. Maybe when DC gets his way and every consultation costs at least £150 before tests or referrals etc , people will start to have more respect.

The one thing I would like is that if the appointments are running late the receptionist tells you that when you book in especially when there are multiple doctors/nurses so you can decide if you want to wait/need to ring someone.

I think people's attitude to the finite resource that health care provision is would change if they were charged 1 pound per appointment/medication tbh - when I am Queen Of The World that will be The Law

The other suggestion I have is how about an egg timer or Chess clock?
10 minutes set which starts ticking when I start looking at your notes, continues to tick from when I call your name and you make your way to my room, runs while you tell me what the problem is/while you get undressed/I examine you/come to some kind of plan or way forward with you and continues while I document everything. Ding, ding, you're out when the bell goes, no matter how far we got.
Would that be better, hm?

FFS, I have yet to meet any HCP who runs late because they either choose to or because they are lazy. What are you implying, OP?
I am rather cross now, actually.

why do they mind so much if there's a missed appointment

Because the person who moans at them "I had to wait three weeks for this appointment" could have had it (amongst all the other reasons).

Although I sympathise with the doctors I think a 'sorry we kept you waiting' and actually communicating how long the delay might be would go a long way (even the train companies manage that and they have massive capacity issues too). Also practices do seem to vary a lot, so some of it must be under their control. I don't think an attitude of being terribly grateful however late and disorganised the service and never ever questioning if things could be more efficient is very, well, healthy.

I have also been kept waiting many times in private medicine so it may not all be down to NHS funding.

YABU for swearing though.

In answer to queries above. We could have longer per patient but then we would see less per surgery. I currently see 15 patients per routine surgery. For an urgent surgery that number can be over 40! We have finite resources. If you want us to have longer appointments we would see less patients per surgery which would have a knock on effect to our waiting times for routine appointments. Please remember a GPs day is not just seeing patients. We also have: telephone queries from patients, relatives and other clinicians e.g. in hospital, results to action, letters to read and action, prescriptions to authorise and sign including lots of prescribing queries. Visits to do. Not to mention training new doctors to be GPs and all the practice related administration involved in running a surgery. This means most GPs have a working day of at least 10 hours if lucky, usually much longer. Plus all the work in their own time to 'keep up to date' and attend courses or read journals or online learning modules to ensure they can revalidate.

You can no longer book double appointments at my surgery. They allocate 7 mins for appointments and my GP is often running late because he is lovely and thorough. I even witnessed him going and making a coffee for a very elderly man one cold winter's day and then ask the receptionist to ring for a taxi. He apologised to me but there was no need I just thought how respectful and kind he was to that elderly, unwell man.
I made people late once or twice. I went in from work as I was feeling very unwell and I had a heart attack in the GP office. That caused people to be late. I also had a long discussion with my GP once because he thought I might have cancer and he was arranging lots of tests.
I know when you are picking up children it can be difficult but sometimes you need to remind yourself of others situations.

I think my last GP would have loved an egg timer and a bell Pacific. Definitely not great from a patient perspective though. It's bad enough that he was looking up at the clock and not at me when I was talking to him.

Will I have to leave half dressed if the bell goes when I'm still dressing?

Yabu. Im not a doctor but hcp i usually run to time but the times i havent have been real medical problems. I remember one morning dealing with someone having a epileptic fit and then the patient following had a diabetic hypo. As usual had no lunch or toilet break that day and ran late for the rest of the day. Both patients left my clinic ok as i stayed with them montoring them etc and making sure someone was with them at home. This took alot of time but was worth it for the patients involved have been seen by me since all ok. I cant image how the doctors manage to keep they clinics to time if its only 10 minutes per patient.