AIBU to think people feel entitled to be rude to GP Receptionists?

[alpacasandwich]

I've got a job stacking shelves in a supermarket. I love it. People are mostly kind, friendly and above all respectful. If someone asks me where something is, they are so apologetic about me abandoning whatever I'm doing.

By my third shift in a GP surgery I'd been sworn at, regularly told I was responsible if someone died before they could see a GP, been given the line "I pay your wages", been hung up on over the phone multiple times, I barely went 20mins without someone angrily eye rolling and shouting and being hideous.

Why do people treat people like that? I always heard retail is hell, but the odd moany customer is the exception. As a receptionist you're treated with absolute disdain no matter how hard you work and how nice you are. I used to cry in the toilets.

AIBU to think people feel entitled to behave this way, maybe due to the idea that receptionists are evil witches?

Our doctors' receptionists used to be really rude and deliberately obstructive. For example when my maternity benefits disappeared after I handed it in to them one point blank refused to do anything about it - she insisted she couldn't give me another one to fill in again and just stood there saying she didn't know what else to do when I asked how we could sort it out. In the end I had to waste a GP appointment to get the doctor to supply it instead.

Then one day I went in and the really arsey receptionist had gone and the ones that were left were acting like someone had come in and waved a magic politeness wand. They were all smiles and falling over themselves to be helpful. It was bizarre but much better. I think there must have been loads of complaints and all the receptionist had been sent on special training or something. The fact that the change was so noticeable shows how bad it was before.

I work as a school receptionist and think that nowadays many people think it is acceptable to be rude and aggressive. I like to think I am very helpful and always polite but I can't believe the way I get spoken to by some parents. I have had mixed experience with doctors receptionist but after doing my job I have more understanding as dealing with rude and aggressive people constantly would probably make you defensive from the start (I hope I am not like that and would changed jobs before that happens to me 😊)

The problem we have had is that we have an official arrangement allowing the rules to be bent but 50% of the receptionists refuse to believe this and won't open the notes where the arrangement is clearly stated. Every time this happens we have to ask for the practice manager to sort it out.

The receptionists at my GP and my previous one were nice and polite as well.

I've had loads of experiences of GP/ Dentist receptionists being unnecessaryily rude. They all seem to think they're doing you a favour, rather than their jobs.

However the one year I ended up in the school office on the first day of September (Teacher, about to go on maternity leave) I was shocked at how awfully I was spoken to by new parents who thought I was a receptionist. One parent was having a go at me because the school was closed during the 6 week holidays (shocker!) and how was she meant to buy her child a school jumper?! Try the summer term before school closes like the rest of us love

Agree with those who say that most of this antagonism - on both sides - is due to pressure in the system, not individuals. When we moved we discovered that every GP surgery near us had closed their list to new patients, and after having to ring an NHS service to ask what to do they assigned us to one on an industrial estate on the other side of town. It's quite inconvenient in some ways, and (I suspect for that reason) seems to be undersubscribed. This, in turn, means it's the only GP surgery I've ever used where it's easy to get an appointment. I've really noticed that it's the first one I've used where I haven't found the receptionists actively hostile - they're friendly and genuinely helpful and kind. I think these facts are related, though - because getting an appointment is easy I would guess they get far less abuse and that makes them less initially hostile. It's the squeeze on resources that makes the patients so aggressive and the receptionists so unfriendly in a horrible vicious cycle.

Oh poor you. My mum worked as a nurse in a fast paced acute care setting for years. Then when she retired she decided to be a doctor's receptionist. She said it was harder than nursing as people were so rude. She couldn't magic appointments, the doctors would say ask what's wrong and refuse to speak to her about squeezing them in if she didn't know the symptoms. The patients would say she wa nosy when she was actually trying to persuade a full doctor to take an extra one in. Anyway she gave up after 4 months.

I'm not a GP but a senior HCP and the amount of completely unprovoked snarkiness, aggression and downright abuse our receptionists take is ridiculous.

I can't count how many times I've taken over a call or a query as the receptionist is getting abuse and given EXACTLY the same information and had people falling over themselves thanking me and being nice as pie - because I MUST be right and be giving the right info because I'm a clinician/senior/qualified or whatever and the receptionist is just a dogsbody who is being obstructive or can't know what she's talking about.

And our receptionists aren't nosey. I have to ask them to ask callers what they're calling about/why they want to talk to me because I don't have time to call everyone back who has a query. So I need to know what it is. And 9/10 it can be dealt with very effectively by a receptionist.

And some people still do it...refuse to tell the receptionist what they're calling about and insist they have to talk to me. And when I call them they've just lost their prescription or need to change an appointment and I point out they didn't need to talk to me at all. And the response I usually get is 'they're just nosey' 'it's nothing to do with them' or 'well, 1/5/10 years ago I trusted a receptionist to get something done and it didn't happen so now I always go directly to the clinician'.

Well you've wasted my time and your own because the receptionist could have organised a new prescription for you 6 hours ago instead of waiting for me to come out of clinic. And I'm going to put the 'phone down after our call and ask the receptionist to sort it anyway because that's their job, not mine!

Our appointment line goes on at 8am and I'm the one that mans it. I get people complaining at 9am they have been on the phone since 8am (so have I). Refusing an appointment with a GP because their favourite GP is booked up (because he/she is everyone's favourite GP). When they get through and I give them the next available appointment they ask if I have anything earlier (if I did I would give you that time).

We have people who live miles outside the practice boundary and use public transport, I know it's silly but they've been patients for years and they won't change to somewhere more convenient. When booking them in I get "can I have something later, I've got to come from xx and the one bus is on the hour." It's wearing and this is within the first hour, sometimes less of my shift. None of the above is my fault either.

One of the receptionists at my doctor's surgery is very rude and condescending. It just staggers me she hasn't been sacked. She takes my breath away with her tone and attitude. Others are lovely and helpful.

The receptionists at my GP are total cows although they know now that I won't take their nonsense and when they realise it's me calling them, take a more reasonable approach (I am polite but very firm). But I have been in the waiting room and heard them grilling other patients over the phone "You've got a rash where, Mr. Massood"?

The stakes are higher with medical stuff, so I understand there may be more odd behaviour. It's still not nice to be on the end of. If it helps, I waitressed for years and there's always just tossers. People throw that kind of stuff around in restaurants when there's nothing more at stake than their status. It did a lot for my patience :)

I was very proud of myself recently for keeping my cool with a receptionist. I wanted to register, had checked the website and phoned to confirm my address was within their area. I walked the mile to the surgery, only for the receptionist to insist that I couldn't register. When I told her the website specified my postcode was included she said it was wrong. I politely insisted and sure enough, the practice manager confirmed I could register. I was very glad that I hadn't let my frustration at a potential complete waste of my time show, as that would have escalated things and meant an embarrassing climb down for her. This is just a very long winded way of saying you don't know the journey that people have had, their prior experiences with healthcare or that surgery. So I try and give people a little leeway.

I must be lucky, I've never had a rude receptionist. But then I've never been rude to them.

I think the trouble is that there is a misconception of what we actually do. Many receptionists and admin staff are trained to take blood, chaperone examinations and we are constantly dealing with chasing results, dealing with queries from discharge summaries and clinical letters that we are asked to deal with by the GP as well as trying to make appointments. I read every single clinical letters and discharge summary and highlight prescription requests from the hospital to the GP. We know exactly what our nurses can do, and we do have to ask about what the appointment is for so they can prepare. Very often I can be looking at the last appointment and asking if the patient needs to be seen that day. Offer appointment. Is that all you have? Yes. Patient takes appointment. Spend the whole morning telling people to phone back later for afternoon. Patient who takes last appointment does not turn. Up.

I do believe that people have had a shit time at some surgeries. But reception staff do not run the practice.

Here's what I don't understand. At my last dental practice, we took mostly private patients and some NHS patients by referral. As a receptionist I would usually encounter this scenario;
Me: hello Mr Private Patient. I'm afraid we've had an emergency extraction so your appointment might be delayed by 10-20 minutes. Really sorry about that.
Mr Private: ah no worries. I'll take a seat.
Me: hello Mr NHS. I'm afraid we've had to make way for an emergency extraction blah blah blah
NHS: What? Nah I can't wait for that *rings mate "yeah I'm at the dentist, but they're running late, yeah takes the piss mate, I'm like fucking hurry up!"
So one was paying £80 for their appointment and one was paying nothing. Guess who the rude ones were?
Also when's Medical Administration Appreciation Day? Cos I could earn minimum wage and be spat at/swore at/threatened or I could flog posh people olives and get a free lunch. Not easy to make that decision!

I am a GP and when I joined the practice I am in at the moment 10 years ago there was definitely that attitude from some of the receptionists. After years of training and good staff selection things have changed and our patients often comment how polite and helpful our reception staff are. I am constantly amazed, however, by quite how rude some of our patients are to them (then nice as pie when the doctor gets on the phone or appears from behind the partition). It is an incredibly difficult job and we lose a lot of recruits after the first week of work when they realise just how hard it is.

How they are with patients is a reflection of the ethos of the whole practice. Most GP practices are under immense strain at the moment- the demand just goes up and up (53 million more appointments offered over the last 5 years with no increase in GP numbers), and many practices have unfillable vacancies so each GP is doing the job of 2 or even three doctors and a lot of practices are on the verge of closing- not good for staff morale. Many of us are teetering on the edge of burnout, which leads to doctors becoming snappy and defensive, which then passes itself down to the staff. This is not an excuse- but just to say that the time and energy taken to change the way the practice is run is simply not available to many practices, who are just trying to get through the day without making a catastrophic clinical error.

As to the 'nosiness' issues- to deal with patient demand most practices have some kind of triage system. The receptionists have to ask in order to direct the appointment to the most appropriate person. There is no point of someone who needs a coil going to see one of the doctors who don't fit them, or a wound dressing to see a doctor and not a nurse. And at least once a week we have an elderly person phone for a non urgent appointment who is actually suffering from a 999 emergency condition but 'didn't want to bother anyone about it' and is happy to wait a few days with their crushing chest pain to see a doctor they like....

WORKzilla is a GP receptionist.

Just thought I'd throw that in the mix!

The receptionists at my GP surgery and at my dentist's surgery are all lovely. GP ones are very friendly, and have gone out of their way for me lots of times (especially when DS was a baby and needed a few emergency appointments at times).

My mum was a GP receptionist, and was always nice to people, as were her colleagues. She said they'd have some patients who were rude, but it was generally when the patient was under pressure, so they'd make allowances.

They did have some patients who were just awful. One guy who travelled by bus and would book an appointment for 15 minutes before his bus was due to leave, meaning that if they were running late at all, he'd miss the bus and start shouting. Another guy who punched his way through the glass barrier thing at the desk because his prescription wasn't ready.

They had a few elderly patients who would phone several times a day for no real reason, and make appointments every week for nothing (they'd get into the GP's room and when asked what was wrong, they would just start talking about their week!). Again, the receptionists had sympathy because these people clearly just wanted to chat, but it was frustrating when the appointments were all booked up and they were having to make people wait a day or two.

I think a lot of the problem is tjat drs/nurses/receptionists don't seem cognizant of the fact that there is a raft of full time working population that cannot drop everything, take a call back if they are in a meeting, sort something out from an hours journey away. I find it extraordinary that there aren't differentiated appointment times for people with different commitments.

I'm sure a bunch of health workers will jump on and talk about the NHS cherishing equality of circumstances but might I just venture that equal opportunity and access rests upon reasonable adjustments. It always strikes me that it is possible to make these for minority groups such as travellers and refugees etc, but not possible to make them for the rump of the population who work full time and need to be working to continue to be net contributors.

I always say what's wrong and don't have much trouble getting an appointment. Routine ones I can book ahead. If It's an emergency I can drop things or am too ill to be at work. The issues are around the routine stuff, the letters not written, the poor info 're blood test results.

A perfect example. My ears need stringing. I had to have a d's apt to see the nurse. Three week wait for that go to reception and find out the hcp only does ears between 1.30 and 2.30. As helpful as a chocolate teapot for a commuter and I have made an appointment privately now.

However whilst Drs claim to be overworked why on earth couldn't the receptionist have told me that when I booked when we had a pite conversation about me needing an apt first thing because of work? It wasn't entirely wasted because I got my thyroid meds and blood test form although the gp had a moan that the blood test wasn't due until September. First available early morning apt. 12th September. The patient can't do right for doing wrong.

The system makes itself far busier than it ought to and should start getting better organised and putting patients first in my humble opinion

The majority of GP receptionists I've encountered are total cows, it's like a job requirement.
Sad but true. When I went to the doctors a couple of years back I went to the reception desk to book in. That's how doctor's surgeries had always worked in my experience. This was my first appointment at that surgery and I'd not been to a doctor in years so I had no idea anything might have changed. The receptionist looked at me as if I was stupid and pointed down the waiting area (further away from the doors so it wasn't like I'd walked past it) to a machine and said 'you book in there' and then turned away. She could have been nice about it but preferred the "patient is an inconvenience" response instead. I was polite & said thank you anyway but I can see why others aren't. Treat people as you wanted to be treated.
(And the machine wasn't exactly user-friendly - I feel for anyone who's less able mentally.)
Oh and the doctor was a complete bitch too.

My receptionist sighs everytime you ring.. no rudeness but always a sigh.

"Hi there, can I have an appointment about my babies raspy breathing please" in a cheery tone.

"SIGHHH... okay"

The receptionists at my GP surgery are very pleasant and efficient. What a shame this appears to be a rarity.

As with all front line staff they are subject to people's frustration and upset, and some receptionists manage it more effectively than others I guess. It's a vicious cycle.

She could be sighing because there are no appointments available or she could have a medical problem. I dread the phone ringing after the morning appointments have all been booked up because I'm expected to magic up appointments on demand.