Was I U with dr receptionist

[Namechangemum100]

Genuinely interested to see if my response was unreasonable...

Called Dr to make appointment for Ds to have his 12 week immunisations. He had his 8 week set last week but was crying too much in the surgery for me to book the second appointment as there was a wait.

Called today to be told there was absolutely no appointments, and he would have to wait until he was 14 weeks for the next appointment.

I pointed out to the receptionist that as the schedule is set for 8-12-16 weeks, they should find a space for him as I know they offer appointments on the day if you call up, therefore find it very hard to believe there is absolutely nothing for him. She told me that it was fine for him to wait until 14 weeks as sometimes vaccinations are delayed when a child is I'll.

Aibu in thinking that

A) everyone and his mother tells us how important vaccinations are, and therefore delaying his by 2 weeks is not acceptable unless for health reasons

B) if the government set out a schedule of 8-12-16 week vaccinations, then appointments should be given as a priority to small babies

C) delaying for a non medical reason and leaving a baby exposed is not acceptable

D) surely there is a reason why they stagger them in 4 week intervals and therefore leaving it 6 weeks may affect effectiveness.

She did eventually manage to find me an appointment (as I knew she would, it's always the way with our surgery) but it has left me feeling very frustrated when we have the fear of God put into us about vaccinations and how important they are, yet I'm being flippantly told that my son can have his delayed without a medical reason.

Ywbu. My son has been waiting for an apt for 6 weeks for a condition he needs antibiotics for. I wouldn't have been happy if his apt had been given to a baby for vaccs.

My son wouldn't need to attend baby clinic (He's a 20 year old, 6' 2" , rugby player) but he could have an apt just before or immediately after baby clinic.

Baby vaccines are not emergencies. And everyone has to wait for NHS appointments..

FunnysInLaJardin

totally off topic and BTW OP you WBU but I am amazed how many vaccinations kids have now. Mine are 8 and 12 and I am sure they only had them at 4 months and 4 years. Maybe I have forgotten though and parenting is turning me senile grin

Dunno.about senile, but you are misremembering. My eldest is 8 and had 8, 12 ,16 week jabs, then MMR and boosters at 13 months, then preschool boosters at 4.

Am I right in thinking you did the 8week vaccination and the following day the drs surgery say they are booked up 6 weeks in advance.

2 weeks though is nothing. I gave up with ds's vaccinations. Try 6 or 7 months in advance.

My sons 1 year jabs were 6 months late... not a word was said.

YABU to be honest, it wasn't urgent.

The rudeness from people on here proclaiming to know it all, actually know nothing. The OP had every right to push for an appointment. My friends son died of Menengitus last year after his vaccination got pushed back. So before you know it alls pull the OP to bits, unless you are medically qualified i suggest you all button it!!

Did the receptionist not tell you about the time limit between vaccinations or as usual think you know best, but now other posters on here have stated about the time you prefer to believe them. Please in future realize the receptionist will be trying to help you don't dismiss them.

In trying to move the appontment from 12 to 14 weeks she was making a clinical judgement for which she has no training. You were correct to challenge her.

Namechangemum100
@rachie...I genuinely didn't realise that it worked like that, not working in the profession myself, and can see that my insistence on an appointment may have eaten into these tasks and for that I have been unreasonable. I will keep that in mind for the future.

I've quit to be honest. I don't want to be in the line of fire all the time at work.

Contrary to popular belief the receptionist doesn't just answer the phone all day and try to wangle personal info out of the patients.

They have hours of online training on top of the PC training that is ongoing ALL of the time, that usually has to be done at home, everything from chaperoning, to manual handling, data protection etc. At least 40 modules at least 2-4 hours each to be renewed every couple of years. We have to take in results, allocate where they go. We had to write memos to the GP when new prescriptions were requested that weren't already listed, meaning we needed a basic knowledge of pharma

We could see all of the records of the patient calling in, so if you're being asked for details it's because it's pertinent. trust me, none of us want to discuss your smear, but we need to know why you want to see the nurse as appointments are allocated in time blocks. Different lengths for different appointments. We needed to know if it's urgent because sometimes Seniorcitizen1 we have to make a judgement call over the 18 month old with the wheezing cough, and the 40 year old that's feeling suicidal. One appointment with 2 people, equally deserving it needing it. How do you make that call? No-one can make more hours in a day, no-one can magic up an extra GP or Nurse out of thin air. With the best will in the world its simply an impossible task.

Ywnbu. But neither was the receptionist.

The dates for vaccinations aren’t just plucked out of thin air. They are based on clinical guidelines and your baby has a right to have vaccinations according to best practice. If vaccinations are delayed, babies are unvaccinated for longer. Statistically it might be slight, but there are risks associated with being unvaccinated.

The underfunding and woeful resourcing of the NHS is not your fault Andy ywnbu to push for the best for your child. Your gp surgery is also not at fault for the current NHS crisis and I imagine the majority of staff are going above and beyond to try to plug the gaps.

The only people being unreasonable in this situation is the shitty government running the NHS into the ground.

It's so much fun to be a doctor's receptionist 

I had a lady come in 25 minutes late for her 30 min appointment for a chat about the coil and smear last night; was just running late. I said it was too late, and she could have them separately in a couple of weeks, or the coil chat at a sexual health clinic in the next few days, or them together in a month. She went batshit at me, saying it was unacceptable to wait a month for them together. I couldn't stop myself from saying 'i understand it's frustrating, but it is made worse by people not turning up for long appointments without giving notice'. I probably shouldn't have said it, and she was outraged. But, it bloody is made worse by people DNAing appointments. I'd feel horrified if I did that, not complain at the date of the next one when contributing to the problem.

Tip of the iceberg tbh. And I work at a surgery where GP appointments are v v easy to get. Same day apps till around midday, prebookable any time in the next day or two. If you're a child or it's urgent, you'll be seen within minutes. If you need an urgent script, I'll try my best to get it done within minutes (even if you've just forgotten to give it in in good time). I go out of my way to help our patients. Spend a significant amount of time chasing adult social care for some of our dementia patients who are left in the abyss with no one watching over them. Spent nearly two hours on the phone with non emergency police today because I was worried about an elderly patient with no NOK not answering our calls last week, and I can't stop worrying about her. In a massive town with a surgery of 30k patients. God knows what it's like for receptionists who have to tell their patients there are no appointments for 6 weeks. I'm the lucky one. But it's never our fault. We just follow the procedure set.

In trying to move the appontment from 12 to 14 weeks she was making a clinical judgement for which she has no training. You were correct to challenge her.

Erm, but we do. Because at one point (early) in our careers we've messaged the nursing team saying mums forgot to book baby's jabs in, next available app is 3 weeks late, is this ok or do we need to squeeze them in somehow? Nurses reply saying it's fine, can be flexible, not ideal but in no way unsafe and explain why. We're not plucking these statements from thin air!

And yes, your child who is supposed to have a 20 min appointment has just been squeezed into a 5 min one due to your moaning. The nurse is pissed off at the receptionist, who'll probably get a bollocking from their boss. Fair enough, as the nurse is running late anyway due to shrinking appointment times, patients are late due to you, the nurse can't pick up their child and the patients who booked their appointment in good time have to wait 30 mins. You want to discuss your PFB and the outrage of initially being given an appointment in two weeks, while the nurses kid is waiting at nursery with no parent to pick them up, and the receptionists are getting it in the neck from all the patients who have to wait an extra 15 minutes++ due to your little rant. This is actually what happens at my surgery very regularly when new receptionists feel forced into booking people where they shouldn't.

Every action has a reaction.

YABVU and you took an emergency appointment that someone else might have really needed.

The jabs that are given at 2, 3 & 4 months in the UK are given at 2, 4 & 6 months in Canada. There is a minimum wait period to give the child's body a chance to recover from the last set. My DS had the second set (12 weeks) a month late due to us being out of the country and as a result the third set (16 weeks) got nudged along until he was 20 weeks. I'm amazed at the people who think a GP receptionist would just cavalierly jeopardise an infant's life by delaying jabs if the timing was so critical.

It doesn’t work as Rachie describes in my health authority- the HCP who vaccinate are mobile and attend different GPS surgeries on different days in a reserved room. There wouldn’t be any vaccine on site to administer it at random appointments so certainly no fitting it into the GPS lunch break or paperwork time. If they magicked an appointment under those circumstances it was probably a case of double booking.

YABU, if there's no appointments, there's no appointments. You waited a week to book the next set, of course the same appointments aren't available as would have been on the day.

In future, it might be better if you phoned on the day or day after your baby's immunisations to book rather than waiting a week.

I'm not sure why in the UK the GP doesn't do it. Here in Australia the GPs do any and all vaccinations in the room during an appointment. baby, child or adult. It is a needle. It doesn't require a specialist nurse ffs.

SalemBlackCat because a doctor's time costs considerably more than a nurses.

The receptionist said that there was no available slot. You pointed out to her that you needed an earlier slot and you were firm with her. You said this about your conversation. Next, suddenly a slot is available for when you want. You might have not said rude words to her but it sounds like you put enough mental presuure on her that she felt bullied into giving you an appointment that doesn't actually exist or will use something elses time. She will probably get told off for something. To me, putting so mich pressure on someone is rude, even if you didn't say rude things.

OP ok you didn't know a few days or weeks wouldn't matter. I get that. You were probably very worried.
But it's ok now. I suppose the receptionist didn't appreciate your anxiety.
Have a chat with the nurse or health visitor.
Honestly babies are robust.
And congratulations

whywhywhywhywhyyy A needle takes one second to give. And the doctor has all baby's immunisation records in front of them on their laptop. Just think of all the money the NHS could save with that duplicate waste. Only GPs are allowed to give needles here, not a nurse.

Salem, in my DCs' pediatrician practice (in the US, where children are routinely seen by a pediatrician) you can make a nurse appointment for routine vaccinations that don't involve baby checkups. The boosters and teenage vaccinations my DCs had after their infant shots mostly took place at nurse appointments.

For those appointments where they were examined by a doctor, the shots were left to the nurse while the doctor went on to the next patient.

The receptionist said that there was no available slot

I also would find it unbelievable that a GP was booked up 5 weeks in the future and there was no available appointments.

plenty of babies don't get vaccinations bang on schedule, and yet we don't have an epidemic of missed-vaccination-child deaths

But individual children dying is not unheard of as per pp

your getting a hard time here but it doesn't sound like you where rude and believe me we are used to people being rude. So what I imagine might have happened is not all practice nurses can give baby imms they have to do extra training for it so where I work they try and do the clinic on a set day with a set nurse so I imagine may be if they do the same then there was nothing in the clinic for the usual day but she's booked you onto another day when that nurse is working or sometimes the nurses block appointment it usually for stuff like dressings because people might need daily dressings ECT so she may have used a appointment that was meant to be used for something else but didn't actually have any one booked in to it . We would not be aloud to take a person's appointment away to give to someone else so I really can't see that happening

I'm laughing at the poster who said you were vile to the receptionist

It is just so MN. There is always a poster or two who makes shit up for more drama.

You keep telling people you did not kick off and weren't rude, but unfortunately, that just isn't exciting enough for some people. And telling you that you can't cope with your children? Priceless.

BTW all of mine were weeks late for theirs due to coming down with viruses etc.

salem it isn't 'one needle that takes a second'. To vaccinate safely it's confirming the patient history, drawing up the vaccines, sometimes three needles -oral vaccine and a dose of calpol to prep, counselling the parent re contraindications and gaining consent, administering, documenting EACH vaccine including manufacturer, dose, location, expiry date in the red book, on the child health sheets and the emis system, disposal of all the waste safely and checking patient over before they leave. All single handedly usually with a queue. The reception above got it spot on.
Someone else that thinks they know more about the system than the people that actually work in it. Don't embarrass yourself.