To just miss appointments as can’t park?

[Wishitwascooler]

Hospital is full to bursting and you can’t park anywhere for miles around. They won’t talk to me on the phone as I’m in the car even though outside hospital 😂 not sure what to do!

Friend of mine had an appointment for cataracts and has to park near the clinic due to the fact that he has been waiting for a knee replacement for four years.

Our local hospital today had queues outside of the car park, the problem is often the ticket machines which are slow that then hold people up from exiting and the whole thing clogs up quickly. Most people can't take half a day off for a short appointment and it causes untold stress at an already stressful time. The cancer parking is always chock a block as well. So much stress and I couldn't go by bus due to mobility issues.

Went to hospital yesterday and they’ve given over a whole car park for staff parking. There were 50 spaces according to the sign. All others were full. They let me in the staff one in the end as I was sitting at the barriers wondering why it wasn’t spitting out a ticket.

People are so complacent with how horrible hospital parking is. Considering the amount of people requiring appointments with mobility issues or unwell, it should be the bare fucking minimum to park at your appointment for FREE and be outside the hospital. Not having to park and walk for ages or rely on public transport which again isn’t accessible to those with mobility issues.

I now live in a country where each hospital or drs have free and plentiful parking because they actually planned the build well and haven’t sold off car parks to private companies. When I had major surgery I needed to be able to be in parking right outside as I had a walker. I wouldn’t have managed a bus or a long walk. Not all of us have people who can take us to daytime appointments!

And posters saying drs are 3hrs late for appointments, wtf!! How do you manage that with work?!

People are so complacent with how horrible hospital parking is.

not really, but until we relocate the buildings, what do you expect the NHS to do?

Let us fight about being given the appointment in the first place, we'll worry about parking later. You can't get medical help in this country, it's horrendous, I'd rather we concentrate on that frankly. Basic treatment when you need it.

It such hard work, parking is abysmal at all hospitals!!! I work in one, if my shift starts after 8:30 I need to get to the hospital at least 1 hour before it starts to make sure I can park. Sometimes I’m still late for work. Parking causes me more anxiety than my actual shift!

Hope your ok!

Why all the drama? I've never known a hospital to see people on time.

You got there, they saw you, job done.

The people arriving an hour early are making it worse, as are the people who sit in their cars for ages AFTER their appointment.

But many people don't have this common sense and there's no good solution.

Presumably that don't restrict parking to staff and BB holders though. If it was drop off only as the person I was responding to suggested, it would be ridiculous.

*Presumably they don't

OP, your description could easily be about the hospital I live near. Traffic announcements on the local radio used to say "it's clinics day today so the usual queues..." (I think there were 2 or 3 days a week with extra outpatients or something?) There was a big project to improve "access" to the hospital by road / pedestrian / cycle transport. But all it did was shuffle the queues around slightly as in reality the delays are with parking and the hospital sites, traffic in adjacent roads is just spillover. Even arranging someone to drop you off for a morning clinic could be problematic if you couldn't walk far as you could spend a long time in a queue of traffic getting near the buildlings, let alone near a carpark!

I'm currently working on a different site in the same trust, which is how come I know that when staff apply for parking permits there is an automatic 10 week waiting list at the moment. Consultants who have meetings on the main sites and work elsewhere dread getting parking in the middle of the day.

Impressive going OP👏

What has happened this this place? It's become a cesspit.

OP is 36 weeks pregnant. Has tried to get there on time, tried to speak to hospital staff and has wet herself climbing over a wall. Where is her health and dignity in all this?

The BB knobs need to rein it in. My Mum has a BB and can't park. Something to do with so many people with BBs needing to visit the hospital and the car park unable to cope.

Not everybody has the same transport links as you do, nor the same support.

OP, you got there, in spite of it all.

Well both are horrible issues and do unfortunately seem to be a UK issue at the moment (I’ve lived in other places and haven’t encountered similar). But then the NHS being so overstretched and underfunded has nearly killed myself and my child a few times, and is a major reason we took the chance to move abroad. The idea of going back and needing the NHS genuinely fills me with fear and I know things have worsened since we moved.
I have family that have been made to wait over a year for surgery they desperately need and it’s travesty. I feel deep despair over the state of the NHS.

I work in a Hospital outpatients clinic.
plenty of my patients turn up late for their appointments because the parking is known to be poor, its known to be poor and its known that the city has a lot of roadworks, bad traffic etc. If I can, I will still see the late patient but I often am doing so in my dinner hour, giving you a shortened appointment or risking impacting on my next patients time slot. Or making me late home. If I so no it usually ends up in argument with the late patient because its never their fault is it?!?

I somehow manage to get here to work on time every day though!

Also I expect the NHS to not continue to build on to existing buildings and expand them without a thought of how patients with bloody get there and park. It’s basic planning. I expect them to not sell off car parks to private companies which charge insane fees. A but if common sense would avoid this. But then look at the bullshit government. There’s a reason the NHs has gone to total shit the last few years.

Hospitals are specifically built with insufficient car parking to appear ‘green’ and encouraging public transport or just because they can’t be bothered. Many old and new hospitals could have much better facilities/ multi storey etc with investment. As usual the powers that be don’t really care and don’t appreciate the needs of normal people to park nearby when ill, injured, pregnant etc and also of people who have a daily life that involves working and caring responsibilities so that everything is time critical (including getting to work at the hospital!) Instead the profit from parking just gets sucked into some private company running the parking .
tbh though OP in the case of maternity I think they have to give you paid time off for travel as well as the appointment (not the case if not pregnant)

Dinner hour 😆I didn’t mean to type dinner hour, I meant dinner 5 minutes

im really fortunate in that I can cycle, so I do as it not fair for me to take up a parking space for someone that can't walk or cycle to an appointment.

I do wish they'd do over 66 year old appointments after 9.30 as then they could use their free bus pass, many complain they'd get the bu but can't use the pass before 9.00am

There needs to be more busses for hospitals to reduce the need for parking for many people - but whilst they make money from the car park that'll never happen

You wouldn't necessarily know that if you're not used to attending hospital appointments.

My line manager lives in a different part of the country that doesn't have the same challenges, and she's a fucker to try to explain why I need to leave so early as well!

Nasty, petty post.

But those of us with disabilities will also need the post 9.30am appointments as we can't use our bus passes before. So who would use the pre 9.30am appointments?

I had ankle surgery about 10 years ago. Even back then, the surgeon apologised that his waiting list was closed, so I ended up going privately. But I recall being discharged after the op, wobbling outside on crutches, still slightly woozy from the anaesthetic and all the drugs that go with it. No way on earth could I have got more than a few paces to the car. How on earth do people manage?

Well I am dead impressed that you scaled a wall at 36 weeks' pregnant! You poor thing, you must be dying in the heat too!

Listen, just ignore the hoity toity judgemental witches who are so up their own arses in their superiority!! Most of us (normal) people have been caught out like this more than once.

When your maternity leave is over, start looking for another job because that's a shithole. Very best wishes with the birth and your new little baby! xx

And people without cars never go to hospital, ever.

@Tophy124 Same friend i mentioned earlier when attending the cataract clinic went ONE MINUTE over the allocated parking time and was fined £70 (he paid £35 cos he paid it off in the first week. 66 year old pensioner. The clinic was running late. It didnt help that he couldnt hear what he was being told by the medics because of ANOTHER problem the NHS wont fix.

He got that sorted at Hidden Hearing in Clacton for £70 Brilliant service and now has full hearing back but the appointment for this was AFTER the cataract appointment. He has to attend another one at the cataract clinic but will be going in a taxi.