To have STORMED out of the Ante Natal Department!

[BigMommaOfAlmost4]

Feel pretty stupid now and can't believe I have been in tears over this!! My only excuse is that I am 30 weeks pregnant.

Yesterday I spent 3 hours in the ante natal department - 45 mins waiting for scan and almost 2 hours waiting to see consultant who saw me for about 5 mins and did not give me a chance to discuss my birth plan or anything really. She said I needed a Glucose Tolerance Test as baby seems to weigh 4lb already so they want to rule out Gestational Diabetes. This means no food or drink apart from plain water from 9pm the night before, a blood test then a sugary drink in the morning at the hospital, then having to stay at the hospital for 2 hours to see what effect the sugary drink has on your blood, then another blood test, and basically not being able to eat or drink anything else until all this has been done. Difficult for me as I am ravenous in this pregnancy, feel like I'm starving as soon as I wake up and get headaches if I don't eat.

It was arranged that I go back this morning for the test. I was given an appointment for 9.30am but was told that the blood tests are on a first come, first served basis so it would be done earlier if I got there earlier. I got there at 9am hoping to get it over and done with quickly so I could eat!

At 9.50am I lost it and stormed out because at least 5 other women who came in after me were seen while I was still sat there (I was also desperate for the loo but did not want to lose my place if I went out). I think what made me see red was that a mum from the DSs school was also waiting (she never speaks to me and is a typical Boden, look down your nose at less well clad people, person), I heard her complain loudly that she had been waiting since 9.15 (so after me) and she was immediately seen. This was after I had already asked how much longer I would have to wait and was told that there were 3 people in front of me. My already fragile inferiority complex went into overdrive at this!! I was also going mad that the longer I was waiting, the more starving I was getting and I would still have to wait at least 2 hours after the blood test to eat anything.

When I was told that the tests were being done by the appointment times not by who came in first, so completely the opposite of what I had been told the day before, I said loudly that it was 'bloody ridiculous and I was not waiting a second longer' and waddled stormed out.

Obviously, now I'm home and have stuffed my face I realise I have cut my nose off to spite my face (as my mum likes to say) and am pissed off I was so irrational. Will also have to call consultant and tell her that I did not do the test. Well WIBU!!

and I had GD with DD3, it was self monitored, managed by diet, didn't make any difference to her delivery or bfing and it went away after however I was lucky as it was diagnosed late in pg with it, for other people it can cause more problems and there is a reason for the test, not just for wasting your time or that of the very busy staff at the clinics.

How do you know they were only doing GTT tests?

And I'm afraid all the lovely extra resources in my trust have gone to Renal and Cancer services, not Maternity unfortunately. Still very much a Cinderella service despite the fact that we all need to get born at some point!

Well if the midwives do not take the blood, surely they have no control over what is going on-especially if that area is used by the whole hospital?

GeekoftheWeek - am I right in thinking that a patient with gestational diabetes will have glucose in their urine, as well as having a baby who is big for dates? I'm a trained nurse, but it is an awfully long time ago, so I could be wrong, but if someone has never had glucose in their urine, do they still need the GTT?

I actually refused the GTT with ds2 - the consultant wanted me to have it because I am, and was then, overweight, but had had not glucose in my urine, so felt I didn't need the test. I never had any positive tests for glucose in my urine throughout any of the pregnancies, and gave birth to babies weighing 7lb4.5oz, 7lb2oz and 7lb.

Of course you were unreasonable. As you have now forced yourself to wait all over again. I suppose we can all sympathise though.

I suspect that you misunderstood the information given to you because there is no way that you would be given an appointment time if the clinic ran solely on a first come first served basis. You had an appointment time, with the proviso that IF you arrived earlier you MAY have been seen earlier -if perhaps other people didn't show up for their appointment or were seen really quickly. You 'chose' to go at 9am, which is fair enough, but by that time there may already have been a back log of patients in another waiting area/clinic/EPU who were already ahead of you in terms on the queue - therefore, the appointment system was in place, rather than a first come frist served system, which you assumed was in place but which is probably used if the clinic is not busy. Boden womans appointment may have been at 9am, or 9 05 am, therefore she would have automatically been seen ahead of you. So you waited for '20' minutes after your officail appointment time. 2 hours, you may have been justified in getting upset, but 20 minutes is not unreasonable. But I'm sure the midwife/receptionist that you took your frustration out on has seen it many times before!

Maybe how this clinic functions needs looked at altogether. In my unit the midwives take the bloods. You don't have to go anywhere else.

StayingDavidTennantsGirl - you can have impaired glucose tolerance in pregnancy prior to it showing up in urine.

Thankyou, mears.

YANBU at all. And I strongly doubt that the reason your experience was so crap was to do with resources: I'll bet it was because the service has never been planned around the actual needs of actual users. Instead it's planned around the theoretical needs of theoretical users and the actual needs of staff.

The proof is: it's not self-evident to you how the queuing system works from walking in, and you got conflicting stories from staff that you asked (including, by the sounds of it, one person who told you "it's first come first served" while simultaneously handing you an appointment time). This stuff is nuts, but it's not a surprise, sadly. By and large, the NHS has miles to go in understanding what patients really want and designing around that, and is stuck on the idea that the answer is always "we need more resource". However, there are a few glimmers of light, with some places making efforts to involve patients in service design and increasing interest in "Lean" operations and patient-centric design (sorry about the jargon).

I don't think you were being unreasonable. The sheer unpleasant mechanics of the test were one of my (many) reasons for refusing it in two uneventful pregnancies.

Did you ask the consultant yesterday what the margin of error was in estimating your baby's weight? What weight were your other babies?

SDTG, as far as i'm aware you can be diabetic (gestational, type 1 and type 2) without having glycosuria.

if I'd had to wait that long whilst watching other people go in ahead of me whilst 30 weeks pregnant and without anything to eat, I'd have exploded.

It wouldn't have been right, or even rational, but that is what would have happened. I'm NOT rational when I'm hungry.

Find the because its ''free'' you must not complain, if its shit argument so wrong and stupid - We all pay for it just not directly.

Agreed so much with slhilly - bad design model - thats where the waste is not in people expecting clear instructions and reasonable service

I got GD with DC3, ended up needing insulin but I never had glucose in my urine. Was sent fot GTT purely based on previous big babies. Nearly died when they said I had GD as I was very reluctant to go for the test

I sympathise.

I had to have a GTT test the other week and knew I had to wait 2 hours at the hospital. I wasn't told until I got there that I couldn't actually leave the waiting room which was a bit of a bummer as I had DD with me and had planned to take her back to the car to read books, play with toys, eat etc and couldn't do any of that just had to sit with her in the waiting room for 2 hours.

Sadly, you have shot yourself in the foot though for walking out, but I can undertand why.

Hope you get another app sorted soon.

Crabious, great that you agree!

TBH, I do think there's something else beyond design model. I think many (not most, but many) staff have lost sight of why they are there and it shows up in how they act. There's often a feeling of trench warfare between staff and patients. Design model exacerbates this, but there remain choices that some staff make that should be unacceptable.

The Robert Francis report into MidStaffs shows how appalling things can get if organisations make it too easy to ignore the patient's voice.

There are individuals who choose to behave badly -- receptionists who ignore you, nurses who are rude to you for not magically understanding how systems work, GPs who think it's ok to shut their practices for 5 hours in the middle of the day and have a queue every Monday morning etc etc.

The brutal truth is that the NHS is crap at calling such behaviour unacceptable and doing anything effective about it -- partly because there are also lots of people who go way beyond the call of duty, partly because it's tougher to take tough action in the public sector, and partly because it's just not how the culture operates. But it is hugely problematic because you always risk ending up with MidStaffs-type stuff like nurses ignoring patients lying on the floor in their own waste, sobbing (it happened...).

I think you should have spoken up at the time - there may have been reasons why the others were saw before you.

It could have been a simple mistake of your file being put in the wrong order, the women seen in front of you could have had more serious concerns or more simple and were being seen by someone else... loads of reasons.

Lots of criticisms here about waiting times etc .......and did any of you complain????

No, I bet not.

You can write to the CEO of the hospital or the consultant or the head of department or whoever. Don't have to be rude just state the problem - can always embellish with tales of difficulties in getting to the hospital, child care responsiblities etc etc

Nothing will change if they don't know what's wrong.

Or on other occastions you can always write to thank them for the wonderful service they provide, if that is the case, and make their day!!

yes please write when its good as well as bad!

I am a doc and can tell you that there are many many more complaints letters than ones saying how well they were treated. Yet every day i have patients telling me how much they appreciate the care they were given.

I would certainly not advise people NOT to complain - if you have issue you should certainly make your opinions heard and i have previously advised patients to complain about things when I felt their concerns were warranted.

But it makes your day to get a letter saying how much you care was appreciated and because of this we made a point of writing after we had ds1 to praise all the staff involved

Josie/AliceT - I've already written to both the A&E staff and the ward staff telling them how grateful DH and I were for their care and kindness last week - I don't think they'll ever know how much that meant to us. Its nice to hear that letters are appreciated as I was worried I wouldn't be able to show how much their care and attention made our situation more tolerable

it sounds to me like you may well have a blood sugar problem (if not GD then mild hypoglycemia) irrational crankiness is actually a recognised symptom .