Apologies for the length of this...
I've been a Dr's receptionist, and I've been in practice management and I've been the person trying to get an emergency appointment for my two month old only to be told my surgery is shut that afternoon - so I've been on both ends.
And the one thing I always say is this:
There are three causes for Receptionist's being told to ask.
- (and most common!) Receptionists are told to ask because a good portion of the population are idiots who think head lice and athlete's foot and travel vaccs constitute emergencies.
- They are told to ask so they can follow a DR-WRITTEN priority sheet for making appointment's - because there's a limit to how many there are.
And there are only so many appointments because there are only so many appointments that there can be. If a doctor worked a fourteen hour day, and you were patient 200, and he made a mistake, would you complain? Of course you would, and rightly so, but that wouldn't mitigate the fact that the doctor made the error because he was exhausted and burned out.
Receptionists are grilled to know this - if they know that their GP is ill themselves, has been up all night with their own child and already has six extra patients to see, they are going to ask what's wrong before asking the dr to see another - for the GP's good and the good of the patient!
The basic guidelines are thus:
A sick child should always be seen. ALWAYS.
A Pregnant woman should always be seen.
For everyone else - it's a case of availability. And it sucks, but it isn't the receptionist's fault.
- Sometimes, just sometimes, the receptionist asks because you don't need to see the GP. You need to see someone else, sometimes fairly sharpish!
My practice ran an average of one a week of phone calls asking to see or speak to a GP when, in fact, the person on the other end of the line should have been phoning 999. I know of three cases specifically where, if the receptionist hadn't asked and made the 999 call, the patient would have waited - and probably have died. They are trained in emergency symptom recognition for just that reason.
I know none of this is helpful when your ill and embarrassed and just want to be seen, but there are reasons and it helps to remember that receptionists work long hours on not-great pay doing a stressful job. You really will get much further with them by gritting your teeth and being nice - a nice patient on the phone is a very rare thing!