audiology appointment BY PHONE

[mumwon]

Dh has received a hearing appointment to be assessed by phone call
This is almost as rich as his phone cardiology appointment
Anybody else had other appointments that make you shake your head!

Oh for sure, some are ridiculous, and we even discounted the telephone questionnaire before we even started, time taken is minimal but we would have tried anything to get us moving over thw 1st lockdown

My epilepsy nurse had different clinics pre Covid - once stable was a phone clinic but I could get back into the f2f system if I needed to. It worked really well for me but was voluntary so if there were issues like hearing f2f still possible.

now back with a new referral to the same clinic. Phone appointment but now asked to be available 2 hours before and 2 hours after the appointment time. I wouldn’t mind (much) if they said 10 minutes before and 4 hours after- it quite often happens that they run late for fave to face. she called on the dot. She didn’t know that was what the letters said.

Appointments said it was in case there was an emergency. What emergency means they may run two hours early?

@RedskyBynight

Please PLEASE feed this back to your trust / complain.

I'm not sure how this will help. DD's consultant can't see any F2F patients at the moment due to the number of Covid patients in hospital. I guess if he has phone consultations with all his patients he might at least be able to help some of them, and it gives him a view as to which patients should be top of the list when he can start seeing patients again.

What would I gain by complaining?

If people don't voice their opinions of this new way of working (even if you appreciate why they are doing it) the NHS has the evidence to continue this way because it seems like everyone is happy with it long term.

Don't assume this is the covid model. This is the new NHS model in the making.

I think I can beat you all... I had an appointment for Mirena coil REMOVAL. This is after months of me trying to get the bloody thing removed as I'd been bleeding for 7 months!!!
The day before I was called and told It would be a phone consultation. I asked how the consultant would be able to remove the coil through the phone....
Fast forward to the phone appointment the consultant basically said I should be grateful I don't have cancer and she would see me face to face in Feb.
Appointment was last week, again, a letter came advising me that this would be a PHONE appointment again!!!
Absolutely ridiculous

I finally had an MRI three months after my initial referral for ongoing knee pain and swelling.
No surprises that all of the exercises and advice I had (the first set of exercises were standard ones sent by a lay person who just read the word knee), that actually none of it will really help as I have lost all of the cartilage between my upper knee cap and femur.
I am grateful, however, that I am not one of the poor buggers who have missed the boat entirely, as all physio appointments except for extreme ones such as cancer have now been cancelled in my area.

Oh, and to add:
I had a text message today that I need to have a blood pressure review (if anything my blood pressure is in the low side, so I have no clue why I need it).
Suffice to say that as I do not have the necessary equipment at home, and will not be attending to use the any-person-with-any-unknown-infection-and-no-cleaning-in-place machine at the surgery, they'll have to whistle for it...

Less bonkers than many, but HV currently trying to book in a development check with 3yo twins that will be a video appt using my phone and take 2 hours (1h per twin).

So basically I am supposed to sit filling in a form and chatting to her on video whilst managing 2 x boisterous 3yos, for 2h.

I declined!

All my sons cardiology appointments have been over the phone since last March. He is supposed to have a scan every three months. Same question: how is he doing? Well if I thought there was anything wrong I would have contacted someone. I also am not able to see through his body to see if his heart is doing what it should so this is a waste of everyone’s time. Just had another letter through for his next phone appointment in a month. Pointless.

I had a C-section in the middle of April last year, the first anaesthesiologist stood about eight foot away and asked me to open my mouth to check for possible issues. I doubt he could see anything. He also told me off for not bringing my gestational diabetes medication for after the birth which was complete nonsense. I was quite pleased when it was delayed until the afternoon and I got someone saner!

Oh this is terrible, what a waste of everyone's time!
Lots of fun here with demented father's recent appointment and GP consultation about a throat problem via video.
Patients sometimes need to be seen face2face and they can usually work out when it's necessary.
Please let your GP know.

It absolutely amazes me how they work these things out. June last year my dd had an appointment at the trauma clinic. Literally went along the lines of how are you, can you move your arm, can you bend this. Fabulous that’s it thank you. Something that was under a minute long and could have absolutely been done over the phone, yet people who really needed to be seen in a physical capacity were offered phone appointments. Baffling.

My 5-year-old DD was flagged up as having a vision issue during the checks they do in reception and referred to the eye clinic - absolutely fine. The first appointment was over the telephone to determine they needed to book her in for a face to face appointment... which they had already determined by doing the checks!

My 2-year-old had a speech and language therapy appointment over the phone, and that was a bit of a waste of time too! They then discharged us as they were all being redeployed elsewhere, and told me to re-refer if I needed it!

In fairness to the staff, they were all lovely, wonderful and did their very best to help - I can imagine they were as frustrated with this as we are!

Yup lots of SLTs being redeployed to covid wards Grace - dysphagia/damage done to speech apparatus after ventilation/ tracheostomies etc. We all dread it to be fair and it is not my field at all, but that doesn't mean I wont be packed off that way. It is terrible, but nothing is manageable at the moment. Likewise I am only doing telephone or video consultations. How could I move between covid and face to face consultations with vulnerable children. First child or parent that dies infected via an slt appt leads to the biggest law suit ever!
All this is terrible but it is all a knock on from covid.

I work for a high street hearing place. We have been open as normal since July, the only telephone appointments are for wax removal in which case we ring first to make sure there are no contra-indications such as blood thinning drugs.

The NHS wanted to do my physio appointment by phone..so I paid to go private and they saw me face to face. 🤷🏻‍♀️

@DarcyJack

Yup lots of SLTs being redeployed to covid wards Grace - dysphagia/damage done to speech apparatus after ventilation/ tracheostomies etc. We all dread it to be fair and it is not my field at all, but that doesn't mean I wont be packed off that way. It is terrible, but nothing is manageable at the moment. Likewise I am only doing telephone or video consultations. How could I move between covid and face to face consultations with vulnerable children. First child or parent that dies infected via an slt appt leads to the biggest law suit ever! All this is terrible but it is all a knock on from covid.

How would anyone prove they got COVID from a appointment though? You can't

I was terrified when I was offered a colorectal surgery appt by videocall. I thought I might have to show the consultant the offending area over Skype

Fortunately it was more of a screening triage chat before he booked me in to take a look in person.

Dd had a phone cardiology appt this week after being referred as her rheumatologist thinks she has cardiac problems. Taken 9 months just for a phone appt. and she had an abnormal ecg last month at the GP!

And no explanation from the GP what the ecg means or what needs doing. Still at least that was in person....though GP does think she had a stroke a few weeks ago so guess that necessitated a face to face appt!

I've just been offered a phone appointment for a diabetes check after having gestational diabetes when I was pregnant. It's supposed to be a blood test, how they are going to do that over the phone I have no idea.

My daughter has been having treatment for a facial strawberry birthmark for a while now, and it's going really well. Her last appointment was by phone (not video) but based on my husband's verbal description of the size, shape and colour of it they have now decided to discharge her. 🤷‍♀️

Video physio... for a dyspraxic child with autism.

I ended up rolling around on the kitchen floor with him to demonstrate as he can't process remote instructions like that.

I think there is a place for video/ phone as a supplement to conventional care at a follow up stage. Certainly not a replacement of!

On the other hand my mum was really happy when her oncology appts went to phone in LD1

They live rurally and it was an hour journey there, usually a good few hrs wait at the hospital for a 10 min appt and an hour travelling back. No joke for someone with disseminated cancer, in pain, nauseous and very fatigued plus the risk of infection whilst immune suppressed from meds.

She absolutely loved it when she could just take a call from her bed. They never examined her anyway just asked about symptoms and checked bloods which the district nurse did for her at home.

She was so disappointed when the secretary phoned to offer her a face to face clinic appt and tried to say she'd been perfectly happy with phone and would it not be possible for the Dr to just phone her in her clinic slot but apparently it was a 'computer says no scenario'.

I think there is a role for a lot more telephone and video consulting than there used to be and that it can be better in some situations but it obviously has to be intelligently deployed.

I had a smear test a couple of weeks ago and it was “face to face” as normal. However, it was in the “red zone” at my GP surgery, with signs all over telling me it was the red zone. A bit disconcerting!

at smear test being face to face!

Well lots of our vulnerable patients are shielders. So it would be home visits as they are not going out. So really for the most part and if they have any sense they don't want us. Esp when we tell them where we have come from or what our office colleagues do.