Fucking GP receptionists

[Eliza9917]

Aibu to think they must train them to be as rude, unhelpful and patronising as possible???

Just left the GP's and I feel like caving the fucking receptionists smug cunting face in.

Yes that's probably an overreaction but they fucking wind me up on a par with dealing with the fucking council.

We’ve got a lovely receptionist at our practice now - cheerful, friendly, goes out of her way to be helpful, assertive when necessary but always manages to be polite - but it’s the first one I’ve ever known in all my 40+ years. I left one practice due to the extremely rude reception staff.

It does seem to be a job that attracts people who aren’t necessarily suited to a customer facing role. See also ‘school reception staff..

Why does being ill or frustrated or worried give you the right to be rude to people just doing their job?

I believe they now recruit them from the ranks of traffic wardens

I love my gp but the receptionists are awful. One woman in particular who has now left. She used to sigh repeatedly through appointment bookings like it was just. so. difficult. She acted like she was doing a massive favour by answering the phone. Couldn't stand her.

"It's minimum wage. I'm actually a skilled medical professional and could earn quadruple that, but I needed a break from it. "

As long as you don't go in with the attitude that the job is a ' break' and you're dumbing down , then you should be OK. As the other GP receptionists on here have pointed out, it's a difficult and often not very rewarding job. Just because you are a skilled medical professional, it doesn't mean you are automatically going to be skilled at this one. It's completely different.

To the poster that asked :

' Why if someone is ill or worried, does that give them a right to be rude '

Well it doesn't give them a right, but if you are good at your job you will understand that they aren't themselves and people might not be as friendly or patient in those circumstances. It comes with the territory surely?

Patients don't have to be friendly but patient while the receptionist does his or her job.. Yes. And polite.
No job should have territory that involves having to take abuse from the public

I simply can’t understand why people haven’t castigated the OP for the language in her post. Can you imagine if she’d advocated “caving the c face in “ of a teacher, or doctor, or postman?

I don’t care for GPs’ receptionists (or GPs, come to that) but the OP’s turn of phrase immediately negates any kind of point she has. It’s very offensive.

YANBU. They're like a hurdle you have to navigate to get to see a GP you don't particularly want to see anyway. I've got a repeat prescription that has recently been changed via my consultant and trying to get that added by the receptionist meant going to the surgery (won't discuss prescriptions on the telephone) and having an argument about what medication I'm meant to be on. They can be a nightmare. When I turned up bleeding when pregnant to ask for a referral to my local EPU all I got was 'nothing we can do, no appointments'.

I disagree. I think being ill brings out a very natural anxiety. People need careful handling. It’s part of the job. If you’re not the empathetic type, I’d say your in the wrong job. It’d be like having an aggressive police officer. Aggression feeds aggression.

“You’re” in the wrong job!

I’ve seen efficient nurses with very little tlc, doctors with appalling bedside manners. They can still be good at the job but they’re not the ones the patients remember as great caregivers. If you’re at death’s door of course, that doesn’t matter but I was in A&E not long ago and a nurse sat me on a chair, in a deserted waiting area and told me there were no blankets (I was frozen having come in my ambulance in the early hours of the morning in a nightie. In February) and I passed out on the chair and was found by a porter on the floor.

Theoxymoron I posted that same one further up thread. I don't think anyone found it funny.

YANBU

It's worse when it's a small village practice, as I don't think the staff are hired based on skill and experience, just pure nepotism because they're a friend or relative of the Doc/practice manager. Which essentially makes them unsackable, so they don't give a shit about actually being professional or respectful.
I left my independent practice for this sole reason.

I've been registered to numerous surgeries and I've never once encountered a rude receptionist. I must be lucky.

I have railed against gp receptionists before, then moderated my feelings after a thread like this and I hadn’t actually been in years.
We have an electric check in system. Elderly (probabaly in his 80’s) gentleman, stood in the queue to check in, was told to use the screen, he didn’t know what she mean or how to do it, she didn’t check him in (which she had done for another patient) but after about 10 mins came out to help him and then told him he was too late anyway and he should make another appointment. Was a thing to see, there were plenty other staff there too. Also you can only phone for a repeat prescription between 10 and 11 (great if you work) and every single time I get told my ds should be making the call himself but they’ll let me do it this one time. He could manage now he’s 8 but not when he was 3.

Some behaviour I have witnessed this morning that I am sure some people are guilty of

-Looking at your phone whilst at the same time talking to reception
-Bringing 8 members of your family with you and talking to them whilst talking to reception
-Calling and demanding exact times for things which is an impossible thing to give - how long is a piece of string. A receptionist can only make a guess at how long something would take and risks being held to account for the time which is why they can be vague
-Calling or coming in demanding non urgent things such as insurance forms for your holiday ‘because you leave tomorrow’

• telling your life story when it wasn’t requested - jusr explain something briefly and quickly and to the point

Is this an English thing? No GP's receptionist here (NI) has ever asked for details of my symptoms. I ask for an appointment, and they book one, in the same way that you'd book anything else with a receptionist. Surely that's their job?

They seem friendly and certainly cheery, so maybe this system means they are under less pressure.

@PookieDo most of those things you've mentioned are basic customer service issues. Doesn't give a receptionist the right to be rude or difficult.

I am not defending rude receptionists but there are some damn rude arrogant people out there who do not help themselves in their approach

It is not your right to get what you want when you want it, there are protocols and processes you may or may not be aware of

‘The customer is always right’ cannot apply in a lot of situations where external or internal factors are an influence-
The receptionist is doing the job they have been tasked to do inside of the rules and processes. Some of the language on here is vile

One of the receptionists has had me in tears because of her attitude. She wanted to insist that ds who is severely disabled had the next available appointment even though it wasn't physically possible to get him there in that time. We had it put on his notes that he had to be given more flexibility in appointment times and she wouldn't open up his notes to check this saying the rules were the same for everyone.
I believe she may have been given some training because we wrote a letter of complaint and she has stopped being so unreasonable but I still dislike having to speak to her.
Some of the others are lovely always offering us an empty room to wait in if there is one available and say they will let the GP know that we are in so they can see ds next if possible.

Then they had mil to deal with. She made an appointment every single week . Because “Dr Brown will be wondering how i’m getting on.” She visited the GP to ask if it was safe to go in a hot tub, and another time to say that her hair dye wasn’t working. And for a thousand other very trivial ailments like having a cold.

I don’t doubt that there are thousands of other people out there who abuse the health service in this way, so I can understand why some GP receptionists have been asked to enquire as to the nature of a patient’s ailment.

What gets me is how receptionists give advice quite categorically, when in fact they must be talking off the top of their head - because it turns out to be completely wrong:

I went in 10 days in advance to ask for a prescription of emergency medication for DD, and told them we were flying on the Monday. They assured me the drug would be at my nominated pharmacy on Friday. DH went in on Saturday morning to the pharmacy to get the drug. The pharmacist had not even had the prescription, never mind ordered the drug. I went into the practice on Monday morning (we were flying at 1 pm, so had to check in by 11 am and go through security). The receptionists told me it was still there, as they had not sent it to our pharmacy in "an oversight". However, they assured me if I took the prescription to the pharmacy, I could get the drug. The pharmacist told me it had to be ordered, and would be in by midday Tuesday! Not much good, when we would be in Italy! I went to Boots, who said the same thing!

I emailed a complaint to the practice manager, that it was no good receptionists telling me definitely that I could get a drug at the pharmacy, when I couldn't - and it was stress we could do without, as we had to take DD on holiday without her emergency medication, and we would have to call 999 in Venice, if anything went wrong (just praying the water ambulances did not take too long)!

Likewise, DD came home from uni and asked for an appointment to get a repeat prescription for her anti-depressants (they would only give her a week at a time, as she was suicidal). They only offered her an appointment after her prescription had run out, telling her she could go to a walk in centre! (They knew her MH history). I rang up and pointed out that her CPN said it was very unlikely a walk in centre would give her a prescription with her diagnosis; and coming off the anti-depressants abruptly would send her into a suicidal spin, ending up taking lots of police time and a trip to A & E or the S 136 suite! They then gave DD an appointment before her anti-depressants ran out!

**NancyDonahue

That happened to me at my surgery when I moved within the same town and actually closer to the surgery (now about a 2 min wall away). There’s a lot of ‘computer says no’ mentality in our surgery unfortunately! I did get it sorted though, but as usual it was in spite of the receptionists, not because of them.

"It's minimum wage. I'm actually a skilled medical professional and could earn quadruple that, but I needed a break from it. "
@Bobbydeniro69

As long as you don't go in with the attitude that the job is a ' break' and you're dumbing down , then you should be OK. As the other GP receptionists on here have pointed out, it's a difficult and often not very rewarding job. Just because you are a skilled medical professional, it doesn't mean you are automatically going to be skilled at this one. It's completely different.

Sorry, no I maybe worded it wrong. I wasn't enjoying my career as much. It's isolating too. I just couldn't face going back to it yet. I have done (a few years of) customer facing roles since I was 15. I was also a receptionist in a dental surgery for a few years before I retrained. I did enjoy it, despite the abuse! And I was never rude, even when patients made me cry!

Ok so can I just clarify from everyone’s posts that GP receptionists are also expected to:

-Read everyone’s medical record/have full knowledge of their family history etc etc
-Don’t follow protocol because it’s rigid
-Follow protocol and never go off course

• don’t ask patients why they are attending even if the senior GP partner has told them to
• be solely responsible for your medication needs especially when you are going on holiday
• give you exact timescales so you know when everything is going to happen
• don’t give you timescales as it might be wrong
• coordinate all this knowledge and expertise on minimum wage, for practices with thousands of patients

Pookie You have described some of our patient's expectations to a T!