How important do you think it is to be on time for a GP appt

[Ireolu]

Just that really.

Do you think it is important to turn up on time or early for a GP appt? Do you think you shd still be seen when you are 10 mins or more late for a 10 minute appt.

This is just for adults over 18 not for children. TIA for thoughts.

I think it’s important to be on time for all appointments and arrangements.

Yes, either on time or early. If I was 10 mins late, I would expect to have missed my appointment and be extremely apologetic.

If I could still be seen I would consider it to be a bonus not an entitlement.

@DadJamie very few professionals on about £100k go home on time.

You’re not in the way if you’re early - you just sit in the waiting room. I try and be 10 mins early at least. Ours has a screen to check in so no waiting at the desk. It’s rude to be late.

Well - so many people on here claim to arrive at GP appointments 10 to 20 minutes early, so it will all balance out! The good and polite 'early birds' (who are clearly better than everyone else,) can be seen 10 to 15 minutes before their appointment, (as they can have the one the 'late' person is late for.)

Then the latecomer who is 10-15 minutes late can have the later appointment, that the oh-so-perfect early bird originally had!!! (Non-existent) problem solved!

You missed my point. Nobody ever plans to be late. People are late because they under estimate how long something takes, or are held up along the way.

GP here. I see 34 patients a day (90% of which are face to face, contrary to what the Daily Mail would have you believe). I have ten minutes per patient (to take a history, examine you, order relevant tests and document). If you’re five minutes late (which seems trivial) that’s half of your appointment. I can’t make that time back. I will try my absolute best to run on time for my patients and am rarely running more than 10 minutes late - I absolutely respect patients have better places to be than waiting for me. But to be totally blunt, in this scenario your job is to arrive on time and my job is to assess and safely manage multiple back to back patients and it makes my job so much harder when people aren’t on time (and worse, then get narky with me when I acknowledge that it’s not possible to discuss multiple issues in the limited time we have left!) Personally, I’ll see you at the end of my clinic unless I’m in a meeting/ have a home visit to attend because I appreciate sometimes things get in the way but honestly, just leave more time. Same goes for me when I am seeing my hairdresser, my dentist or basically anyone else I am a client for- I absolutely expect that if I don’t arrive on time I’m not going to be seen, or it will be taken from my appointment time.

@PleaseGiveMeBackMySummer
You maybe need to take some deep breaths.

On time. No point in turning up early as our surgery GP's always overrun. Blood tests and/or nurse appointments usually little to no waiting

I apply the third rule for appointments so if a trip takes 30 mins, I add 10 for unforseen issues. If its an hour, 1 add 20 mins etc.

If is somewhere I've not been before and parking issues I add a further third.

If its really important, I just double the time.

I always arrive early for my GP appointments.

It’s the GP who’s never running on time.

@Sugarfree23 I disagree about people never planning to be late. Some people I am sure do, as if they did not, they would sometimes be on time.

GP appointments and all medical appointments you should be on time.

I arrive on time, but I don't think I've ever been seen on time at any GP practice. I allow around 20-40 minutes as the usual expected time to be waiting on a good day. Me turning up 5 minutes late would make zero difference (not that I do, just in case).

It's disrespectful to the doctor and everyone who cannot get an appointment.
If you made an appointment there must be a reason, so prioritise it and if circumstances are out of your control ring and advise the reception who can then shuffle the next one in earlier and still be able to fit you in when you arrive.

It does annoy me when they never run on time and can sometimes keep you waiting for ages, yet if you are unavoidably 10 minutes late, they won't see you.

I had a telephone consultation about a month ago, and they rang me over an hour later than they should have done. Yet a fortnight previously, I'd got stuck in traffic and was a few minutes late getting to my appointment, and they refused point blank to see me. The smirking receptionist wouldn't even check.

I have been late perhaps two/three times in the last 40 years, always unavoidably. On one occasion I tried to cancel, no answer.

if I am.late for anything, I apologise profusely. I would have more time for GP Surgeries if they similarly apologised about lateness. It is increasingly clear they think the vaule of other people's time is irrelevant and they are entitled to waste people's time. Not only due to lateness but also due to lost prescriptions, wrong orescriptions, failure to refer, providing barriers to access.

I shall gently venture that if GP practices wish to continue to mess around and fail to deliver services to the public, they need to reflect on some of their more draconian initiatives and the attitude people are faced with from their staff which is often unhelpful and too often rude.

I think like you and always try to get there early. Our GP's surgery is very efficient and we are usually seen on time. It isn't unusual to be seen early if somebody else has failed to arrive, though they would see people in the order of their appointments, not in the order in which they've check in. If they can save time by doing this the person who is late can sometimes be slotted in.
The nurses in the practice see patients rather than the GPs if this is appropriate - blood tests, vaccinations, routine check-ups etc - which seems very sensible to me although I have heard some patients refuse to see anybody but a doctor, even for these appointments.
I've seen people make verbal attacks on receptionists who tell them that they are too late to be see, perhaps more than half an hour late. They're usually offered an appointment fitted in later, but often refuse them, saying that they are "too busy" to wait.
I should add that the latecomers are rarely people who have obviously taken time out of a working day to get there.

I am always on time or early for any appointments- however what pisses me off is then they are late seeing you and no one apologies for your wait also my doctors surgery is dead never a full waiting room but when I went for a app with a nurse I was waiting 25 mins and again in an empty waiting room

One day on my way to the surgery, there was a nasty car accident involving the car two in front of me. Person inside the car needed to be cut out by the fire brigade- go off in an ambulance- police wanted statements etc. Had to wait for the road to be cleared, cars involved made safe etc etc. No way to turn around. I had phoned the surgery to let them know what had happened. I was quite poorly and was obviously late.

Should I have not been seen? It wasn't the end of the day- fortunately.

I always aim to be around five minutes early - there's never been more than two people in front of me waiting to book in.

I've only had an appointment cancelled once, and that was when I had a new born who randomly decided he wanted an extra feed, and as he'd been in hospital for a week due to weight loss, if he wanted feeding I wasn't going to make him wait. I did phone to explain the issue, receptionist was not nice about it, but what was I supposed to do?

Interested to hear why you think you shouldn’t?

do you understand the principle of appointment

@ThelmaBorden · Today 17:37

do you understand the principle of appointment?

Do all of the GPs understand it? I don't think some of them do.

There's not just one side to this you know. The GPs are not perfect. As I said, they are often late, and no WAY is it always people being late so often holding them back! Such nonsense. People need to stop acting like they are perfect, and the patients are always the ones at fault! It's nauseating. 😯

@fiddlesticksandotherwords · Today 09:32

It does annoy me when they never run on time and can sometimes keep you waiting for ages, yet if you are unavoidably 10 minutes late, they won't see you.

I had a telephone consultation about a month ago, and they rang me over an hour later than they should have done. Yet a fortnight previously, I'd got stuck in traffic and was a few minutes late getting to my appointment, and they refused point blank to see me. The smirking receptionist wouldn't even check.

Exactly this. Trouble is, it doesn't work both ways. THE GP and the surgery in general hold all the cards, and there is fuck-all you can do about it. The patient is 7-10 minutes late through no fault of their own, and the GP refuses to see them, and the smug receptionist says 'computer says noooo.' Yet if the GP is late, you have to sit and wait, (up to an hour sometimes, but often half an hour minimum.) Why is it OK for the GP to be up to half hour late SO OFTEN, but God forbid the patient is 5 to 10 minutes late once or twice?!

I don't know why they take this stance that their time is more important than mine, but it does fuck me right off. They are paid to do a job, and sometimes they don't do it very well. As my example from earlier in the thread illustrated.

My GP coming in (after lunch) almost 10 minutes after my appointment still munching her lunch, and then pissfarting around, yakking to the receptionist, made it nearly half an hour after my appointment before I got called in.

I was the first one in too, so the GP was already nearly half an hour behind before the afternoon began. Too much of a God complex some of them. And as I said, too much 'my time is more important than yours' attitude!

Yes, many of them do a fine job, but some are not so good, and we need to stop with this silly idea that anyone who works for the NHS is an Angel who can't put a foot wrong, and they must never be criticized.

What really pisses me off is that you know they are always running late anyway, but they still refuse to see you. When it happened to me, I hadn't even made the appointment, they rang me and asked me to come in to see the doctor to discuss my blood test results. Even after I explained it was the doctor who had asked to see me, the receptionist still refused to check to see if I could be fitted in.