If you arrived half an hour late for an appointment

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Would you still expect to have it?

Although the reason might be very valid eg stuck in traffic because of a serious accident. No I wouldn't. Business is business. It goes on. It has to. Every minute is crucial. When you're earning money

I would expect the first appointment of the day to run on time. I would expect a little bit of pace instead of the languid shuffling between rooms. I would expect the receptionist to at least act like they give a shit when they inform me I'm going to spend half of the day I had to book as holiday sitting in an overly warm waiting room.
I would also expect the doctor to make it on time when the traffic is heavy. I know the traffic is heavy. I just sat in it. I checked and left earlier because I didn't want to be late to your clinic, on the off chance that it might actually run on time. (Ha!)
Like someone up thread said, an apology goes a really long way.
My time is also important.

Well in this case say the time slot was thirty mins then the business wouldn't have lost out in saying to the late person you can have yours in 30 mins because it's time for my next appointment now instead of the op who was on time having to sit for 30 mins !

Of course I don't want to be booted out of a consultation after 10 minutes Spuriouser. I would expect my clinician to decide how long to spend with me not admin staff.

But the NHS is not a charity. We are paying for it. I wish people would start acknowledging that rather than behaving like patients should all be terribly grateful for the treatment we receive and never utter a word of criticism even the service is often quite shit and some of the people who work within it shouldn't

Waiting for audiologist at local hospital. Two hours pass. Finally called ... not by the doctor, but by an administrator who says sorry, due to an earlier emergency the doctor won't get through his clinic list today, need to rebook.

They must have known when I arrived that he was never going to make up a two-hour (or longer - I wasn't the first person with bad hearing to be called through in that ten minutes and emerge grumpy) delay. Two hours in a waiting room with a fidgety 1yo for no reason is no fun and could have been avoided altogether.

If I'd been told on my arrival that it was very unlikely he'd get round to me then I'd have been briefly annoyed but at least I wouldn't have wasted the whole bloody afternoon.

I find at work (NHS Podiatrist) it is a damn site easier just to see people and claw the time back later.
There will always be someone who is slow on their legs, (walking with a frame perhaps) or in a wheelchair .
There are patients with dementia.
Patients who don't take note of their appointment on the phone and claim they were told an appointment time that doesn't actually exist

They will always trot out "Well I'm always kept waiting"

I will get them in and see if they apologise. If they don't , then I say "I saw you today but a lot of my collegues will refuse to. There's a 10 minute leeway and many of them stick to it"

I tend not to make them wait because if I see them at the end of the session, maybe in my lunchbreak, they take this as a green light to take up my entire lunch break

Some patients take longer. Some need letters written (to GP etc)
Help with shoes/socks
Booking another apointment.

If I am running late myself there's a good reason. I'm not slurping tea.

Oh yes the "I phoned to say I would be late"

The office will tell them if their 10 minutes late they might not be seen.
If they;re 5 miles away and its already 10 minutes past their time , they will be late.
Instead of saying "Okay I'll rebook" they turn up.
"But I phoned , didn't they pass on the message"?

No that must've been when time stopped because of course when you phone it freezes time

And the "bring the next one in early" - 99% of the time the next one isn't there.

I have been given some utterly eye boggling excuses for people being late (but I'm going to write a book, so I can't tell you )

And the "bring the next one in early" - 99% of the time the next one isn't there

I don't know about that. I arrived 22 minutes early for my mammogram. I'm being that specific because the hospital gives specific appointments too - mine was 11.17am.

I was waiting when another patient turned up full of apologies 5-10 minutes late. Her appointment was before mine. The receptionist had a right go at her which made her very upset. I asked the receptionist to stop being so unpleasant and asked why she hadn't put me in the other woman's place. She told me it couldn't be done. Possibly not, but she didn't give any other explanation and was annoyed that I'd dared speak.

In the changing room there were a set of bossy instructions about undressing. Nothing to do with removing metal jewellery - they want you to be a quick change artist so as not to inconvenience the technicians. I go for annual MRIs at another hospital and they have the same, though they're slightly more polite.

I get that these are very expensive machines and there needs to be a conveyor belt, but a bit of charm wouldn't go amiss.

Of course I don't want to be booted out of a consultation after 10 minutes Spuriouser. I would expect my clinician to decide how long to spend with me not admin staff.

But if they do that then they're likely to be running late given that the appointment slot is 10 minutes. You can't have it both ways, either people are booted out after 10 minutes, or the clinician spends as long as they need to spend with you which if it's more than 10 minutes will make them run late. Even if they only spend an extra 5 minutes with each patient, after their first hours appointments they'll already be running half an hour late.

If you're attending a hospital clinic, they often book several patients into each time slot and if there are more patients in each time slot than staff seeing patients (e.g. 4 patients per time slot when there are only 3 clinicians doing the clinic) they're going to run late for the entire clinic.

You're also very wrong about how much power the doctors have over the running of the clinic and patients booked into the clinic-they have very little power over this.

Unfortunately the NHS is massively underfunded and if appointment times were longer and clinics weren't overbooked then waiting times to get an appointment date would increase, which people would also be unhappy about.

I want to know more about the hairdresser and the bouncy tv presenter limited

This happened to me with a beautician. I sat there for a while with no explanation until I asked reception and was told she was running late. When it got to half an hour plus I walked out. I had time to wait, could easily have gone for a coffee or a browse round the shops, but it was the way they just didn't seem to care that got my back up!