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.

How did the patients in the queue get to see the GP without checking in?

A better option might of been to actually help her. If you wanted to speak up speak to the receptionist and say can't she have an appointment to have her meds explained.. because of you an elderly lady as left confused and with medication thats potentially wrong

Once she had gone we all checked in! Her blocking the process was the problem.

Not unreasonable. This was a failure on the receptionists' part and shouldn't have been allowed to go on for 25 minutes, it should have been shut down in seconds.

I dont think OP was yhe rude one here. Holding up a queue of ill people for 20 odd minutes whike you keep sayinb yhe same thing is way worse.

@Mangledrake I didn't say anywhere in my post it wasn't up to the op to decide if the woman had a problem. It sounds like she well did have but the receptionist wouldn't have been able to deal with it then and there and directly herself. She would have either needed to ask her to check at the chemist that a mistake had been made or made a call back appointment with the prescriber or asked to clear the queue before she could support her. It was the receptionist who could have managed this situation better.

It doesn't work like that. Maybe it does in whatever job you do.
In medicine you just know you've got X number of people to see and increasingly less time to do so if no-one is being sent through, so you'll probably be finishing late.
It's very surprising that the clinicians weren't contacting reception to see what was going on.

Another staff member could have come to help. What's this lady supposed to do - go home and go without meds / take the wrong meds because she's not being heard and helped?

I would absolutely have interrupted and asked to check in. I wouldn't have waited 15 minutes or 25 minutes. But I'd have done so politely and without reference to the conversation another woman was having about her own medical needs.

Thanks - I accept that, but the OP deciding to criticize the woman publicly for trying to stand her ground when she wasn't getting the help she needed just wasn't necessary or reasonable. You're right that there might not have been a real problem and i presume the OP assumed not too. But there may also have been a very dangerous problem. So even if we can all think of harmless explanations, they're not relevant.

It's hard enough trying to get medics and receptionists to listen to you sometimes without the other patients ganging up on you too! But sorry if I misunderstood your point.

or isn't it not plausible that it was obviously not 25 minutes at all, as not even the politest person on the planet would stand behind someone listening to that for twenty five minutes, without politely attempting to get the receptionists attention to check themselves in.

And it is HIGHLY unlikely that a receptionist would allow it to continue without asking them to step to one side momentarily so they could check anyone in waiting for an appointment and come back to her.

And there is no way on the planet that those 5 people were all 25 minutes EARLY to their appointments.. as soon as it hit their appointment time they would have been politely (or impolitely) interrupting, you can't even get an appointment half the time, there's no way those 5 people stood there watching their appointment come and go with only an eye roll, total rubbish.

I'm old and I never hold up a queue in the bank because I never go into the bank as I check my balance via the banking app on my phone. I can't even recall the last time I went into my bank, must have been years ago.

Not really - the incompetent receptionist who didn’t offer a solution was the problem. You were then rude about the person with the least power and the most need of a solution. Well done you!

So the GP sat and twiddled their thumbs?

They didn't pop out or phone reception to ask where all the patients were for the last 25 minutes?

Yeah.
I used It's very surprising that the clinicians weren't contacting reception to see what was going on to convey all of the above politely.
But you've definitely made your point.

As a GP this is really annoying. If a patient doesn’t check in I just assume they’ve not turned up, and I get on with filing test results, reading letters etc till the next patient arrives. It’s really annoying if the patient then suddenly checks in, 15 minutes late, and I’m told it was due to a queue at reception. Because it wasn’t the patient’s fault, I still have to see them, making me run late for all subsequent patients.

We have a self check-in, but it sometimes malfunctions, and also some patients can’t work out how to use it.

You were right to say something OP, but really the receptionist should have taken control of the situation and asked the lady to step aside for a moment while she checked people in (which literally takes a few seconds).

I doubt the receptionist would have answered the phone, given how busy she was

Agree and depends how yo say things.

Clinician in a GP surgery here 🙋🏼. There is zero way that a queue built up for 25 MINUTES and that zero patients booked-in as arrived in the whole of that 25 MINUTE window.

In our inner city surgery we get very busy, and our self check-in breaks, and our reception gets a bit backlogged with people with enquiries etc… but the absolute worst it gets (on the very busiest most chaotic days you could
imagine) is probably a 5 minute wait. Maximum. …That feels like a very long time for those waiting. It’s frustrating for them, it’s boring, it’s stressful, and they’re feeling poorly

But what it categorically ain’t is 25 MINUTES 🙄

Yanbu.
I get very ill if I stand for any length of time so I always butt in if I need to in these kind of circumstances. They need an appointment system to sort out those longer conversations

Not unreasonable at all. Somebody had to say it. 15 minutes is ridiculous. The receptionist should have been more assertive.

I think your response should have been directed at the Receptionist rather than the lady talking to her. You could have said something along the lines of "Excuse me, I wouldn't interrupt normally, but you don't seem to be able to help this lady. Would it be better to refer her to someone who can, and you could then deal with the rest of the queue more quickly?"

25 minutes?! She would have been made to leave after 2 minutes in my local surgery.

I’m surprised you all stood around, it would have been anarchy here.

Fair 🤣

But they always manage to answer the GPs immediately.

In an ideal world I think that would be the perfect thing to say for the situation, but I’d imagine a surgery would probably ban a patient and strike them off for saying that to a staff member

This is the fault of the receptionist. S/he should have moved her along much earlier.