I upset a lady at GP surgery today

[TheQuirkyMaker]

A queue of five people in front at surgery. Waiting room pretty full. Only one receptionist available. An elderly lady at the front was telling the receptionist that she had just picked up meds at the chemist, and they had been changed from her regular ones to different ones. There was back and forth discussion, and every few minutes the lady would say, "but nobody told me they would be changed". I asked the lady in front of me how long this had been going on and she said "about 10 minutes". After a full further 15 minutes I said "Look, this is getting us no where, none of us will get to see a doctor if we can't sign in". I got a bit of condemnation along the lines of "she was entitled to her time", but I said, "this is reception, not a consultation. Just repeating that she wasn't told her medication would be changed is getting us no where. This could go on forever".
People got a bit sniffy with me, and I got a few stares, but I was right, wasn't I?
I get we should be tolerant of older people, but there has to be a bit of give and take.

God forbid people be “kind” to the elderly. It wasn’t her fault she wasn’t being sufficiently helped by the receptionist, who should have been able to signpost her elsewhere if not answer the query directly.

I mean I get why it was frustrating for you and everyone else but I still feel bad for the lady.

It’s the same at the bank. The old people filling up the queues checking their balance. This is why they are shutting them down. I don’t know what they will do when they do.

People seem to lose all concept of time when in a queue. I work in a shop and the amount of people who say I've been waiting 10 minutes when they've been waiting less then 2.

Presumably because some older people have cognitive issues, hearing issues or need support with sorting things like medication and require a little further time to complete tasks and errands, which would be relevant in this case as the lady with the prescription issue may well have benefited from such support.

do you think its possible she had dementia or soemthing like that. people get very confused with that.

She was as bright as a button and left the surgery with a smile and said "I don't want to be told off again by that awful person who is so busy". She said several times "There is a queue behind me" so the receptionist knew she was causing a kerfuffle. She had nothing better to do with her day except inconvenience people, and let them know she was upset with the GP service changing her medicine.
Yet she knew she was able to make me be the intolerant and unkind person.

Mine too.

Most people who repeat themselves think they haven't been heard the first time, either physically or metaphorically. I repeated myself several times at the GP surgery recently, when they declined to prescribe medication for my husband, didn't inform him, and decided that it was perfectly reasonable for him to find out when the medicine didn't appear at the pharmacy. I kept repeating two questions "if you think it's reasonable not to inform patients that you've declined a prescription, how are they meant to know you haven't prescribed it, and how are they meant to know what to do about it?" and "if you knew you weren't going to prescribe a medication and you knew that your patient was going to be in pain as a result, why didn't you feel the need to follow it up?" I got various answers like "we don't do that", "we don't control the NHS app" (it said the prescription was approved) and "we have 14,000 patients. We can't talk to them all." Eventually the penny dropped and they said 'We probably should have sent a text message saying that he needed a doctor's appointment before it was prescribed. Shall we book one in now?" Well that would be helpful.

If you’ve seen another thread today about school games - you know there could be arguments about whether this was an actual queue 🤣

Totally unprofessional of the receptionist. If that patient wasn't understanding what the change in medication was about, she should have booked her a telephone appt or asked her to step aside while she deals with the queue. That is a receptionists duty, she needs to learn to prioritise.
My tactic is to give death glares, lol, then smile sweetly when I have their attention.

I think you were a bit rude. She was given the wrong medication. That could be really stressful for her. She wasn't getting the help she needed by the receptionist. Why should she go to the back of the queue to then get to the front again to continue her conversation? She was there first. Its up to the receptionist to resolve it, or if she can't resolve it, explain to the lady that she can speak to her in X time or book her an appointment with a clinician to discuss.

I had a similar situation in the chemist on Monday. I needed to pick up my medication I needed to take before an appointment in the surgery next door.
I had allowed 20 minutes time to pick up the medication then take it and sign in.

My prescription is always ready and waiting and when I got to the chemist and two people were before me so I thought I had plenty of time.

The woman in front of me was told they had run out of her medication but she could get it from another pharmacy close by. She wasn’t happy and kept saying she always got it from there and needed it.

The conversation kept going round in circles and the other pharmacist was doing a flu jab in the room next door and there was just the two staff in.

I knew my meds were literally made up on the shelf behind and just needed passing over but the lady talking was around 5 foot 10 and I’m less than 5 feet tall, I found it difficult to even catch the pharmacists eye or do anything as the woman was blocking the desk, in order to say anything I’d have had to push in front of her.

The queue was also building up behind me and it’s a tiny chemist so people were starting to queue outside the door.

After 7 minutes of this a man behind me went over and interrupted and said that we were waiting and told the woman she might have all day to have a conversation that’s going nowhere but the rest of us were waiting!

The woman then stood aside but said she would talk to the other pharmacist.
He came out of the side room and she literally grabbed his sleeve and started demanding her medication, he wasn’t happy and told her sharply that in the time she’d taken up she could have collected her prescription from the other nearby chemist.

It is so frustrating what these things happen and I was so grateful for the man intervening. I doubt it would have gone on much longer but it was still unnecessary.

If the same had happened to me as OP in my doctors surgery then my doctor would have come out to see why no one had checked in, there is no way he would have sat in the room for 25 minutes whilst the receptionist was dealing with someone else. The check in screens are often not working so the Dr/Nurse comes out to call names.

There have been a few times I’ve needed to check in when the receptionist has been talking to someone and she’s just politely asked them to wait for a minute and checked me in.

Was it definitely 25 minutes OP? I know it was 7 minutes in the chemist as I was worried about missing my appointment so kept checking the time.
25 minutes seems excessive and strange that people were frustrated with you rather then grateful. If I haven’t checked in after 6 minutes I miss my appointment so if it’s similar at your surgery that’s a lot of missed appointments!

I'm sorry you've got a crap GP surgery.

Apparently not since the OP says:

She was as bright as a button and left the surgery with a smile and said "I don't want to be told off again by that awful person who is so busy". She said several times "There is a queue behind me" so the receptionist knew she was causing a kerfuffle. She had nothing better to do with her day except inconvenience people, and let them know she was upset with the GP service changing her medicine.
Yet she knew she was able to make me be the intolerant and unkind person.

So the OP obviously didn't think she had any such issues.
So no point mentioning she was elderly.
Unless the point was that elderly people have nothing better to do with their days except inconvenience people.

I think it was what you said (not that you said something) that was rude. You were very blunt, and could have been far more polite whilst conveying the same message

I often look at elderly people and think about how vulnerable they must feel. You likely damaged this women’s confidence.

drs don’t just not see you - if you are late to book in because of a line they will still see you.

The problem is that within elderly care within the NHS, you really can ask the same question to the same person 5 times and, on the 6th, finally get a totally different answer.

Most recently ‘please could we have a self-discharge form?’ Asked many, many times over the course of more than an hour, to the same small group of staff (as well as to all the people they referred us to). Always told ‘oh, we don’t have those, you need to see x’. On the nth time round this merry-go-round, a person we had asked multiple times suddenly said ‘Oh, ok, here’s one, just sign here’.

Utterly bizarre.

I probably wouldn’t have said anything but I defo would have been thinking it. Luckily we have a self check in at our GP’s otherwise you’d be waiting forever because everytime I go there’s a queue of people waiting to see receptionist. One time I checked in and an elderly man was discussing something with the receptionist, from what I could hear she was helping him with some sort of issue with his results, I went upstairs, waited, saw the dr and when I was leaving he was still there. At least he had a nice receptionist, we have a mini hitler at ours and she would have shamed him into leaving after about 2 minutes.

Having read your updates I think you sound pretty awful op. I know we’re not supposed to be ‘ageist’ but I think about my late nan and she may have done something like this, not to be difficult or to deliberately inconvenience people but because she may have struggled to understand then got herself in a flap because she didn’t have her medication and didn’t know what to do next.

It should have been dealt with better by the receptionist but it’s very likely you dented this lady’s confidence and made her feel like crap. The tone of your posts makes it sound like you think she was doing it on purpose to make a problem for everyone else.

We’ll all get old one day, if we’re lucky enough. I hope people treat me with a bit of kindness and compassion if I need it.

This is definitely a receptionist issue.

The receptionist could have said any of the following:
I see, let me book you in with the doctor/nurse in charge of prescribing
Shall I get someone to call you to discuss this
Do you want to sit in the waiting room and I'll see if I can get someone to come and have a chat with you
Would you mind if I just check these people in and then I can give you more of my time

There were many other ways that it could be dealt with.

I don't think you were necessarily wrong for bringing up the fact that you needed to sign in for your appointment, or break the cyclical conversations, but if you had the time you could leave feedback for your practice so that they can treat their elderly patients better, and run their check ins more efficiently.

There was no need at all for you to express an opinion on this lady's problem. That wasn't in any way your business. Many surgeries/ pharmacies have notices explicitly asking you to respect other clients' privacy.

All you needed to do was interrupt and ask to check in, explaining that you were concerned about missing your appointment.

I'm glad you think she wasn't upset. I hope she hasn't left with the wrong prescription. In a caring role for an elderly parent, I found about 1 in 4 scripts would have errors.

There was just no need to interfere and criticize her. People will often fixate and repeat themselves when they are trying to hold their ground at the wrong end of a power dynamic. That doesn't mean they are wrong.

You might think about why you were happy to criticize this older lady's behaviour to her face, but not the receptionist's, when the receptionist was the one who could be faulted for not doing her job.

I don't think you did anything wrong and would have likely done the same.

Her getting different medicine could have been that she got the generic rather than a brand,it could have been a mistake at the chemist,it could have been that the gp or practice based pharmacist changed her medication after a review. With any of those the receptionist herself wouldn't have been able to help her directly. She could have told her to double check with the chemist and if she had already done that then arranged for a call back from her gp.

It's really not the OP's job to decide that another patient doesn't really have a problem. The NHS makes millions of medication errors a year. All OP needed to do was to ask to check in.

Agree it was a receptionist issue but you weren't wrong to say something. What would the alternative have been - keep waiting for another 10 mins?! Unfortunately most people have places to go and other things to do.

Perhaps could have been more diplomatic but sometimes frustration takes over when no one is taking action.

They were delighted, on their phones, checking Facebook, phoning home, thinking, oh, a lucky break. Of course they were hiding in their treatment rooms!