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.

Really important, and I say that as someone who really struggles to be on time and always has. It's public time and money at stake.

It's best to to a little early my GP has a policy that allows you 15 minutes after this the appointment is cancelled.
Last week I had an appointment at 12.20 and I wasn't seen until 1.35 which isn't unusual they always run late themselves.

I'm late to lots of things (ADHD) but never the doctors, even if it does take me 2 days of prep to achieve It's actually really stressful for me, I literally have to plan the whole day before and day of appointment to the minute and religiously stick to it or it all goes to shit on the day. Don't really understand why, have just learned that that's what I need to do to be on time, so that's what I do.

Can it not be true that
a) NHS staff are working under pressure and often understaffed, and that running late is sometimes due to patients missing appointments or emergency situations that need to be dealt with

and

b) not everyone always has 1 hr + to allocate for a 10 minute appointment. While some posters happily turn up early and wait 45 min reading a book or listening to a podcast, others might be stressing that their childcare is closing or they haven't got another £3.50 to pay for another hour parking or they've taken 2 hours for lunch and will lose pay etc.

It is important to be on time, but I also usually expect to have to wait for at least an hour because something will have happened and they'll be running late.

I love waiting for my doctors for an hour each time I go!!! I wouldn’t be late but I drives me nuts!

Though I have never been seen on time, I do make sure I am there promptly. Yes it's a pain but worse if you are late when they are ready for you and you're not there - they will call for their next appointment and tough.

Of course a patient should be on time. However, as a patient I always am on time, but GPs never are. So if for some unavoidable reason I am 5 minutes late, I would not be happy to be rejected knowing that had I come on time I would still be in the waiting room 5 minutes after the time of the appointment.

I'm usually early to my appointments and in some cases, I get seen early. Perhaps someone before me has cancelled/not turned up/is late, so they decide to see me sooner than my appointment time? The waiting area is rarely very busy so I'm not taking up much more space, and I doubt I'm in the way at my GP practice.

Any GPs or nurses out there - is it better to be slightly early to an appointment, or bang on time?!

Emergencies happen, and patients themselves are asked to wait when appointments run over or emergencies come in. I have waited plenty of times well past my appointment time without fuss. I've even had them 'forget' to call me for appointments on their end for phone appointments. If i were to have a true emergency in getting there, I would think the courtesy would be reciprocated if at all possible.

Depends on whether you want to be seen really doesn’t it? If you turn up late, you probably won’t be seen. If it’s not urgent and you aren’t fussed, live dangerously and chance it.

Given the number of patients booked in, they can’t let people wander in whenever they want, it would be carnage.

Oh bollocks to that. Therapy appointments, like any other appointments, are at a set time. Given variability in traffic, parking, and other unexpected delays, or the vagaries of the bus system, most people will need to build contingency time into their journey. Generally, unless you live very close, you have to choose to either time it so that you're usually early (and occasionally delayed but on time), or so that you're usually bang on time (but occasionally late).

Quite apart from not wanting to be rude by being late, and wanting to make the most of my therapy session rather than feeling rushed and stressed, I'm probably paying £1–£2 per minute for this person's time, so I don't ever want to be late.

Most decent professional therapists will have somewhere you can wait until your appointment time, just like a decent professional solicitor or a decent professional podiatrist. No need for separate waiting and leaving areas — they don't have that at the GP, the solicitor's, or the CMHT.

I have occasionally seen therapists who had no waiting area — one working from a private house, and one working from an office in a small business estate. It would be ridiculous to expect a client to either magically turn up at their precise time every week, or to hang around on a random street corner in the rain until the dot of 3pm, so generally they scheduled their appointments and any writing-up time so that if necessary, they were ready to let you in up to ten minutes before your time (and either start early, or fill time until the start time). Even so, it was a worse overall therapy experience from the client POV, IMO.

Sometimes, the person driving me was able to stay while I waited in the car, but that's not ideal — some people, including me, benefit from a few minutes in the waiting area before their appointment starts, to transition out of "world" headspace and into "therapy" headspace. It's normal for therapists to have a waiting room, and usually to furnish it with this in mind. Therapists who don't create a comfortable environment for their clients, including a calm waiting area which allows clients to arrive in plenty of time and mentally ready for their appointment, should accept their responsibility to compensate for the lack of waiting area by making it very clear what the arrangements are, and not running clients back-to-back.

Assuming you weren't literally banging on the door of the consultation room knowing that another client was in there with the therapist, it is absolutely not a boundary violation to turn up ten minutes before your appointment time. Your therapist was just taking advantage of your unfamiliarity with therapy in general and her setup in particular, to try and disavow her own responsibilities and make you think you made a faux pas. Ten minutes early for an appointment? Boundary violation my arse. It's normal, polite, considerate behaviour.

I think you should be on time, but I think the practice should have an efficient method of signing people in when they arrive. I've had a Dr refuse to see me because I was "late" when, actually, i wasn't late, I was 5min early but had spent 15min getting to the top of the line to tell the receptionist i was there.

I've only been late a couple of times max, both times (20 years apart) because I didn't realise how ill I was til I actually left the house and had no option but to walk to the surgery, so with the best will in the world I was a couple of minutes late and arrived sweating and panting having rushed there.

Have been on times MANY times in between.

Side note - I hate it when employers (per a PP) say you need to arrive 15 minutes early for a shift but only pay you from the start of the shift. No thanks! I'll arrive with just enough time to hang my coat up and wash my hands before the shift, not donate extra hours of my time a week.

This.

I have ADHD and find time management extremely difficult I have loads of strategies in place and try very hard but sometimes my strategies fail and I am late. I don't expect to be seen if I am late but very much appreciate it if I can be accommodated. Blanket rules for lateness are not helpful or appropriate imo. For example if the next patient had already arrived and can taken my slot for example, it costs no one anything if I take their slot instead. It if I am running late but the GP is also running late and I haven't been called it would be nonsensical to refuse to see me. Obviously there are scenarios when you can't be accommodated and it's tough luck.

It's essential or you won't get seen.

Of course it’s not okay to be late. It causes backlog and being seen on time is difficult enough as it is. If I’m on time (always) I don’t want to wait even longer because the person in front of me was late!

I see you’re a GP - yes yes and yes again! I hate lateness, it’s the ultimate in bad manners unless there’s a valid reason. I think you should be able to charge for missed appointments at your discretion.

Very important to be on time or early. GP surgeries are stretched to the max now. There are of course occasions when extreme traffic or something means no matter how hard you try, you’re late, then you need to be prepared to not be seen and wait another month for an appointment 🙄 But when it can be helped, don’t be late and mess other people’s appointments up.

And i think the hospital should pay that patient the £76

You've reminded me of the times some years ago when I used to attend many of my DD's mental health appointments with her.

The clinic admin was so chaotic. It was in a three storey townhouse type building and you couldn't just walk in and up to reception as the front door was locked. You had to ring the bell and wait for them to answer, which usually took forever. DD and I regularly got there 15 minutes early and then would be in the building between 5 and 10 minutes late because their admin seemed to just ignore the doorbell. During that time both of us would also be phoning them too but it went through a long queuing system and then very rarely got answered.

Yes, as I said in my previous post, it is very important to be on time. In our case though it was also actually important for the admin for the clinic concerned to actually let us into the building so that we could check in for the appointment.

On more than one occasion we were finally let in (late) by the therapist herself who had gone to the waiting room to look for us before checking the constantly ringing doorbell (us) and was very apologetic. Nobody ever had any idea where the receptionist was.

My latest Cool Story Bro that happened to me is turning up 5-10 minutes early as requested to a consultant clinic (with a carer), checking in and collecting little ticket, doctor running over an hour late, me becoming increasingly unwell in the waiting area, being attended to by three HCPs, two of whom went in to tell the doctor, doctor refusing to see me, me having to be taken down to A&E, and the original doctor being informed of this by a nurse - and the doctor putting me down as a Did Not Attend.

I've got the DNA letter in front of me. 'Returned to GP care'. Cheers, mate.

I mean, I'd laugh at the absurdity if it weren't so awful.

@Georgeandzippyzoo hospital clinics may start late because of unrealistic job planning by managers.

In some specialities people will do a quick ward round before starting clinic at 9am. If they aren't allowed a realistic time to do that ward round then their clinic will start late.

They often don't like it but the management team won't allow them to schedule the clinic to start later as they can't book as many patients in.

Net result - pissed off inconvenienced patients, a doctor who gets no lunch and reduced time to deal with clinic admin.

I have surgical colleagues who do a morning list at one hospital until 12:30 and an afternoon list a different hospital in the same trust that is meant to start at 13:15. In order for it to start at 13:15 they need to be on the ward seeing patients and consenting them.

Quite how they are meant to teleport the 2 miles between the two hospitals to do this eludes me and them. Net result - the list starts late, in order to do all the patients everyone on the team needs to stay late (unpaid usually) or we cancel the last patient which I know is really annoying / disappointing for them.

This is one of may reasons why doctors are striking. We have no bloody autonomy, aren't listened to by the non-clinical managers and are constantly expected to plug the holes in a crumbling service for free.

I'm fed up of paying "missed class" fees to my gym for classes scheduled 2 hours after my planned work finish time due to operating lists overrunning. I'm afraid I now cancel the last patient. I've also started asking the non-clinical manager to come with me to explain why the list was overbooked.

That is fucking bonkers 😫

I think it's important to turn up on time for all things but especially medical appointments.

I get that things sometimes intervene but surely you always allow enough time to get where you need to be?