5 mins late for medical appointment and reaction of HCP

[BooeyBubbleHead]

I am 34 weeks pregnant. Due to an unforeseen traffic diversion followed by a slow moving farm vehicle on a winding road, I arrived 5 minutes late for a medical appointment today. I had left enough time to have been 10 mins early, should it have been a standard journey. I think being on time is important and I would never intend to keep anyone waiting. I was unable to phone ahead as I was driving and do not have hands free, and safe places to stop are few on this route.

This is a very regular appointment and I have never been seen on time - I have always had to wait at least 10 mins after appt time, and sometimes up to 30 minutes. I accept and understand having to wait and have never made it an issue or taken it out on staff; the sheer volume of patients mean that it is inevitable and nobody's fault.

Today, HCP was incredibly offhand with me, and even implied that I was lying when I apologised (sincerely) and explained why I was late. The appointment was rushed and very unpleasant and I felt that I was being punished. There was much passive aggression and hostile body language. I did state that I was offended by her tone but this just made her more argumentative - she needed to have the last word. I arrived feeling stressed and left feeling even more so.

AIBU to expect the same empathy and understanding when running very slightly late, that I give regularly when kept waiting?

Really annoyed and considering making a complaint...

Patients shouldn't be late because it has a knock on effect blah blah blah. Because when HCPs keep you hanging around in the waiting room for half an hour that has zero impact on the rest of your day/work/appointments/child care.

CP how about HCP being very late, we have lives, work, kids etc to go to! Tge doctors have always been on time in our practice, but the practice nursery I have had to wait 45 min plus, every time. Dd has ASD, and sees the Paed, the number of times he's overran by half hour to 45 mins and she's having an almighty meltdown, as he just waffles on. You get up to leave, and he just waffles more.

Kali110 - I would rather have not been seen to be honest. I was late and I would have accepted it far better than the way I was spoken to yesterday.

I'm a teacher and routinely have children collected late. It infuriates me when it is a regular occurrence (I have a couple of repeat offenders!), but I still manage to get my pint across professionally and without resorting to passive aggression and hostility. When parents are genuinely late through no fault of their own and arrive in a panic (it happens!!), I do everything I can to calm them and reassure them that it's ok, their child was ok and not to worry. I may still be mildly infuriated inside as I have meetings to go to/books to mark, but what's the point in making someone feel worse than they already do for a one off situation that was often out of their control.

I have sent an email of complaint.

But they charge a massive amount more in taxes in order to make it possible. We have a much lower tax rate in this country than in these excellent healthcare countries. Not always, as where I am there is a co pay system with health insurance and you can get up to 85% of your costs back in most cases, and 100% in some.

if you also think about it, adding the costs of your NICs to your tax rate, gives a high rate as well, so we are fairly highly taxed in the UK. The NHS needs to be charging for foreign patients, health tourists, looking at what it provides, and how it is structured. The govt needs to look at seeing if it can afford to buy the Trusts out of the massive PFI payments that one G Brown thought were such a good wheeze.

Meant paed overruns his appointments and your sitting there waiting in the waiting room for your turn whilst dd is having a massive meltdown. When you get in he waffles on and does not keep it concise and to the point.

Everyone has an excuse.

Including you CPtart. Can't you see that?

slender

The point I was making is that given private healthcare is not an option for the majority because they cannot afford it, it seems bizarre to me to be so vitriolic about a service that is free.

Does anyone really believe that if the NHS disappeared that their tax contributions will drop? Really? You must realise that your individual contribution comes nowhere close to the actual cost of your care- unless you have never accessed A&E, had children, or plan suffer from any of the typical age related conditions that you might expect to.

effiels latecomers waits to the end or rebook. Simple.

YANBU.

Most of us are annoyed by lateness, including the patients who routinely have to wait long past their appointment time to be seen. There's no excuse for rudeness in your situation, where you couldn't have done anything to avoid being late (except leave ridiculously early, which is not reasonable) and hadn't done it before.

I was told off by a receptionist once for being bang on time, actually told off like a child, apparently I should arrive 5-10 before my appointment. I was then kept waiting 25 minutes before my Dr was available and Dr kindly apologised with a 'sorry to keep you waiting'. I am always kept waiting and have never been late. The only reason I was bang on time was because I arrived early and popped into the pharmacy first. But the attitude of the receptionist really annoyed me. I do think they should attempt something to combat waiting there must be some mathematical queue efficiency model they could try to employ. And DNA patients should be given a 3 strikes and you're out, find another Dr.

we are fairly highly taxed in the UK

Maybe so but we don't spend much on healthcare. The UK spends less on healthcare than most comparable countries - graph here

We spend 9% of our GDP compared to, say, France at 11%. That equates to a difference of £32 billion a year - enough to employ another 64,000 nurses.

The HCP could be as annoyed as she liked that you were late, but it was unprofessional and rude to show that to a patient.

I'm glad you told her you didn't like her tone. Next time ask to speak to the practice manager.

Don't think it would be 'simples' irl lunchbox but I'll give it a go one day when the receptionists and myself are feeling thick skinned.

I'd have always thought a rushed appointment was preferable to being made to wait a long time or rebook for two weeks time but obviously not as clear cut as that.

They can combat waiting time by increasing the length of appointment times and not routinely overbooking clinics.

People are saying you are being unreasonable. I think that's ridiculous. You are not asking if it is reasonable to arrive late - you have stated clearly that you have never been late before and that you aimed for 10 minutes early and there was an unavoidable diversion. You couldn't have planned for that. You were asking whether or not the attitude of the HCP was acceptable, given that situation. And the answer is no, it is not acceptable. It's not acceptable given any situation.

I'm not sure why it is that there seem to be more snippy receptionists at doctors' surgeries either. We have an appallingly rude one who shouts at and belittles patients. I'm just trying to work out how to complain about her to the practice manager without said receptionist blacklisting me so there are no appointments available for me ever...

A lot of appointment slots in surgeries/hospitals etc may only be 7-10 minutes long so if you arrive only 5 minutes late then effectively 50% of your appointment time may be gone. Yes I understand that clinics may keep you waiting and that doesn't seem fair but they are probably runners late because of patients arriving late

It's unprofessional to be offhand with you - they should either see you with good grace, or refuse to see you and ask you to rebook.

Lateness is a huge problem though. It only takes one person to be late for everyone's appointment to be delayed. If the clinic seems to run late, patients who were kept waiting won't be so bothered about turning up on time next time, meaning the whole thing just snowballs out of control.

theskyatnight great idea. Why did we never think of that?

Presumably you either have a few thousand doctors and nurses down the back of your sofa to make up for us taking longer with each patient or you're happy to wait even longer to be seen as we will be seeing many less patients each day.

I agree that she was very unprofessional to be off hand with you . Every patient should be treated with respect.

I'm never late for anything but onc was literally 1 min late to dental apt. I was having private dental work costing me £4000 but in a surgery that also does nhs work. The receptionist said that my apt was cancelled as I was late. I asked if she could ask the dentist she refused. So I left and told them to cancel my treatment. The dentist then phoned me grovelling saying of course she would see me the receptionist didn't realise I was a private patient. I refused and went else where they lost out on £4000 private work.

Shiny have a look here about-france.com/health-care.html to see how French health care is funded; it's not as simple as the govt paying the whole lot, and there are charges different to ours for GP visits, medication etc. I pay about €25 per visit for the GP in Belgium, I pay for blood tests, prescriptions, flu jab etc, although we have a very comprehensive private health scheme via dh's employer, we pay a lot for it.

I think we need to start charging for GP visits, or at least charging if the appointment isn't kept. The NHS isn't 'free' any more than Trident, defence or education are 'free'.

I'm glad you have complained. There is no excuse for rudeness and unprofessional behaviour. Too many people just suck it up, when actually these people who think it is acceptable to be nasty to ill, stressed people should be disciplined and forced to raise their game. They would be sacked if they worked in a company that needed to make a profit - why should our fab nhs be dragged down by sloppy attitudes and rudeness.

I haven't read the whole thread so may be repeating posts but presumably all of you complaining about your treatment if you are five minutes late for an appointment realise the irony of then complaining about having to wait for 30 mins normally?! How do you think the health care professionals end up running half an hour late?! Maybe all those 2/5 mins late appointments with patients foaming with righteous indignation about their treatment add up to ... ummm... half an hour?

Shit happens. I refuse to believe that anyone on this thread hasn't been late at least twice in their life due to completely unforeseen circumstances. I am anxious about punctuality - I am the kind of person who turns up at the airport 3 hours before I really need to. This week, I stood in the rain around the corner of someone's house because I was 20 minutes early, and that's not unusual. Yet despite taking what are absolutely ridiculous measures to avoid being late, I've still had days in my life where it has happened.

Of course it's not OK to be rude to someone who is sincerely sorry, and passive-aggressive behaviour is absolutely not alright. Since this is a regular appointment and the HCP knows the OP is normally on time, it wasn't nice to make her feel so bad about it. A simple "These things happen, and I know you're usually here in advance, but do try to be on time next appointment, because it has a knock-on effect for the whole day" would have sufficed.

We all think of the nhs as free but we have paid for it and stroppy receptionists who shout at patients etc should remember that we are customers, keeping thrm on employment and not inconveniences.