Honest answers please! Am I being precious?

[shortbreadat180degrees]

going to avoid specific details to keep this anonymous

I work in healthcare but it’s also a profit making business. Think along the lines of a private dental or gp surgery. I’m the healthcare professional seeing the patients, our manager isn’t, he’s more in charge of the business side. He has no clue about the clinical side and just overbooks as much as he can to make as much money as possible. The result is we run 40 mins late every single day and patients complain (understandably!). As you can imagine I’m leaving as soon as I can get a new job

I had an incident recently where, as usual, the manager overbooked the diary and we ran very late. I had to make a few calls for further management for my last patient. There were still other staff at this point (receptionists, other practitioners, manager etc) so I took the patient to the waiting area. The other staff knew I was still working and saw the patient waiting. When I went out to let the patient know the next plan/steps I realised the other staff and managers had all just gone (including the one overbooking everything), and there was only one practitioner left who was literally heading out the door as he was in a rush and was really late for plans so he couldn’t stay, so it was just me and the patient left ourselves in the entire building for 10 mins or so after this until I got everything all finalised for further treatment

I’ve never had that happen before- I’ve stayed late myself with the building locked to finish admin tasks but never alone with a patient in the building. And there’s always supposed to be a manager waiting behind when we run late and still have patients- the other practitioner had no idea it was just us left and he couldn’t stay and it’s also not his responsibility to so I’m not cross at him

I mean nothing happened so it was fine, and the patient was just waiting in the waiting area, but i would have thought it’s a health and safety risk because if the patient became unwell I’d be completely myself? And also from a protection POV- I’ve never been attacked by a patient but unfortunately I’ve heard horror stories of other people who have been (even with other staff in the building) and we are based in an incredibly rough area with high levels of drug abuse and crime and I’d have thought you always needed at least 1 other member of staff present in the building for health and safety.

the patient stayed in the waiting area the entire time and we have full cctv there so I felt safe from that POV but as a young woman myself, what if something had happened or i had needed help and there was no one there?

Am I overthinking it or is this worthy of a complaint that I was left alone? Or am I being a bit precious? I don’t want to come across like I’m having a tantrum about working late, especially since I am pissed off at the manager for his appalling diary management in general, but im annoyed at the entire situation and just felt quite unsafe with it all

You are not being unreasonable...I don't think that situation is acceptable. I would raise this as an issue with the manager on your next shift.

Honestly I think you’re being a bit precious, but in my youth I worked in small hotels where I’d often be the only staff member on duty on a reception back shift or a night shift. Plenty of small shops or other small businesses will also only have one person on duty at a time. I’d say the chances of someone there for a medical appointment and presumably unaware that you were the only member of staff suddenly turning on you are vanishingly unlikely. You’re probably more at risk on the way home.

Sounds like no one has your back.
You have a professional, medico legal as well as moral obligation to your patients, which you cannot fulfil when you are made to work in these conditions.
Go to your management, if that fails, go to your medico legal support
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Check the business policies and procedures. There should be a lone working procedure. I don't think you are being precious, I work in social care and we do lone work but we also have a check in system. My manager wouldn't be going home until she knew I was safe.

This is unacceptable. In healthcare there should be lone working and lock up procedures and it sounds like neither were followed. You need to raise this as an incident if a policy was breached or at the very least a near miss. Your safety is important but also the patients. If they had a medical incident whilst alone with you, you’d have no support, no debrief and also nothing apart from cctv to help you if a complaint was raised against you. Does the employee liability policy cover lone working in a building either? I don’t think ours would if policies weren’t followed.