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.

I'm dumbfounded. How can anyone believe a patient querying unexpected changes in their medication is unacceptable?

I can appreciate standing in a queue to check in (for however unbelievable a length of time as described here) is annoying. But the issue is with the receptionist/understaffed/ill-equipped surgery, not the patient who isn't just mindlessly popping the pills prescribed to her.

Patients should be active participants in their own care. They should be questioning unexplained changes in their care. A change in medication can have serious consequences for a patient, particularly if the change was due to an error. Doctors aren't infallible, and patients aren't wrong to query them.

It's really concerning that the focus was on the woman stating what the issue was again and again, and not being offered a solution. Why the assumption that she is the problem, and not the receptionist who from your description was not offering any solutions? Of course, the queue needed something from the receptionist, not the elderly lady, so that could well be why there was the assumption about the elderly lady being the issue.

This happens to me literally every single time I go to the GP surgery. There is always someone at the front of the queue having a long discussion with the receptionist so that nobody else can check in. There’s a self check in screen which seems to be permanently out of order. I was 10 minutes late for a cervical screening test recently because I couldn’t check in!

I think it’s the receptionists fault. They should check whether anyone needs to check in and prioritise that, rather than ignoring the queue while dealing with a long query. They must know that people are waiting to check in for appointments.

I would have ended up missing my appointments I literally turn up with a couple of minutes to spare since they always tend to run late. I hate waiting about. I’d definitely would have had to say something.

OMG THAT WAS MY NAN haha not really, i probably would of done the same. i constantly offend people

The fault isn't with the older woman for the lengthy discussion, the fault is with the receptionist for not dealing with it. They could have gone into the GP between appointments or called through and found the answer to the ladies question.

She is right to question, it could have been an incorrect perception mistakes happen and that is dangerous. The GP should have originally explained the change to the lady and this wouldn't have happened.

Your stepping in is to self serve and that's up to you but the staff are poor at their roles.

I would definitely turned round and told you to shut the fuck up

It was very possibly the same medication in different packaging anyway. I wonder if she’d tried to speak to the pharmacist about it, which would be the sensible thing to do.

It sounds like you upset a number of people tbh.

Do you not have a touchscreen for checking in?

yes, I thought most had those now.

A lot of people on here have very poor boundaries.

An entire GP surgery was basically at a standstill because of a person’s inability to read the room and problem solve.

OP did exactly the right thing, and stated her case firmly but politely. No member of the public has the right to hold up a queue for 25 minutes, save for a life or death emergency.

This was on the receptionist. She should have made another appointment for the woman or gone and spoken to the GP to verify that the new meds had been correctly prescribed, or asked her to step aside while she checked the rest of the line in.

If any queue was held up by one person for 25 minutes, I am absolutely sure that more than one person in that queue would complain!

100% all of this!

25 mins…… just repeating the same thing? Really?

You could also have been polite!

sounds like you were impatient and outspoken

Exactly. Why is the person with a legitimate complaint being told she is in the wrong. The problem was the setup. The receptionist was doing two jobs that conflicted. Dealing with patient queries and managing check in.

The OP blamed all this on the wrong person. Now she was a round of applause.

The OP did the wrong thing because the practice was at fault not the patient.

This is like cancel the cheque.

You were rude. Ypu could have interrupted to check in but there was no need to comment on the patient's behaviour. She may have been very worried about taking the wrong medication or suffering from a cognitive decline.

Actually, the receptionist at our GP surgery wouldn’t have engaged in such a long conversation with the patient……..they would have booked an appointment, probably a phone call, with a clinician and shut that conversation down. It’s not the administration staffs responsibility to look at patients notes and explain about changes to medication.

That’s what I was thinking. My tablets come in different forms each time. An older person might not realise.

Every year in the England there are 237 million medication errors the lady had every right to question it.

Were the doctors not wondering where all their patients were?

The receptionist should have asked someone else to speak to her as she was clearly concerned, then booked you all in whilst someone else could have put the elderly ladies mind at ease.
🤷‍♀️

If she really was there 10 minutes before you and then a full 15 minutes before you said anything then some people had been behind her 25 minutes, surely they had missed their appointment times by then!? Most people aren’t turning up to appointments half an hour early. Seems odd if the sign in machine was broken that the surgery would be happy to let a full 25 minutes go by without anybody signing in as that would have had a knock on effect on later appointments too.

OP - I would have been equally annoyed and frustrated. Think I would probably have said:

‘so sorry to interrupt, I can hear you’ve got a prob with your meds, what a nightmare - would you just mind hanging on a tick if we <gesturing to large queue> checked in - we don’t want to hold the doctors up by being late for our appointments’ <sympathetic face>.

I find if you are really obsequious then the other person either has to cave in the face of the obscene levels of politeness or they become the ‘bad guy’ by being rude to you. If they are rude then repeat ad nauseam then bitch about them like hell once they’ve gone. YEARS of working in retail.