So at 3.30 right on time of Appt. was seen by new Anaesthetist -very nice lady..spent 20 mins and felt she was very receptive...however, she could only offer me another drug to take at night..and will put me on The List for SI injection and asked if i could do a one day cancellation appt...of course said Yes..but then she said it would probably be at another hospital (Me-..Big Sigh but saidYes.) Lord knows when this appt will be📅 ....
On way out spoke to nurse commenting how quiet (dead- shouldn't use that word in a hospital) it was and she told me that 8 people were DNAs ...i said that's shocking...some other 8 people waiting have missed out on appointments...really the NHS should charge if there are no extenuating circumstances for people who have just failed to turn up!! 😞
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Bea61
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How awful. All that wasted time for the medical staff.
Anyone who doesn't turn up for an appointment any time in the NHS should, I think, be charged unless they have a good reason. Just forgetting should not be an excuse unless for the old. Nearly everyone has a mobile which can be set for reminders of appointments. Often clinics send a mobile text reminder.
Totally agree Dee...even the Reception lights weren't on and the Anaesthetist was from 'my' Trust....no wonder they keep cancelling Pain Clinics...just think of the cost of her expertise and more importantly, people like you/me waiting several months just for consultation...and now the long wait to get on The List for actual pain treatment injections...
Why only for the old? A little ignorant don't you think? Given that this is for a pain specialist in a forum for people discussing chronic pain.
I have an appointment with my gp at 10:30am, don't worry about any wasted time. I gave up trying to sleep at 6am because I couldn't shift the pain, plenty of time...
When the booking system consists of a piece of paper, administered by people who couldn't organise a ****** in a brewery. Things are not going to be ran efficiently. As a software developer (who has worked on booking systems) it's pretty trivial to text the next people in the queue when there's a cancellation.
We have to be careful not to blame patients for DNAs until we know for sure that it is the patients fault. When research into this was done they found that a number of DNAs were due to administrative errors like letters not going out in time or getting lost in the post. Letters that were not clear in the time, place and date. (I once got a letter that didn't have enough information on it for me to even know where to go as it was a clinic in a GP surgery in a different town!) Recently someone found that they had been told that the appointment was cancelled, then it was reconfirmed, but when she got to the hospital one system said cancelled the other said it was live. So she would have been deemed DNA by one part of the system but not the other.
There is also a problem with weekend appointments where there is no facility for the patient to cancel if something last minute has happened.
We had a spate of DNAs at our GP surgery one week and it was only when the social prescriber pointed out that there had been road works and an accident and no one could get in or out of the town that they realised it wasn't the patients fault.
There is evidence that a lot of people who 'forget' are people who have mental illnesses, are very ill, or are from areas of deprivation and struggle generally with services. Some have asked for a cancelation appointment, got it and attended but didn't think to cancel the routine appointment, assuming that the system would do that for them.
Yes, sometimes patients do forget, (but there are things that the NHS can do to help with that too) but it isn't always the patients' fault.
Hi..i think i may have mentioned in last week's post about this issue with the booking system contradicting my phone appointment...However, this Saturday Clinic was an Extra Clinic laid on and the Anaesthetist was a Locum...the nurse explained that people were contacted by letter and phone and confirmed to attend...its a real issue...
I take your point that people who are not in good mental health or have no-one to attend with them perhaps do not realise they have to cancel the scheduled appt. if offered a late cancellation appointment.
For a long time, I've often thought that when surgeries etc. have a rolling ticker display of the number of DNA's in the previous week/month etc., they should also include the number of practice/hospital-initiated appointment cancellations/re-arrangements/failure to notify etc. Plus, they should state the number of total appointment and quote the % that the DNAs or FNA (failure to notify etc.) represent.
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