So this morning, I struggled and walked across to the Surgery/Chemist. I went to pick up my prescription. Whilst being there I thought I would ask about extending my sick note. I went to the front desk and I asked the receptionist could I please talk to a Dr regarding my sick note? He responds with no you can't ask here ring up the surgery. So I got my phone out of my pocket. He then asks what are you doing? I responded saying you said to ring the surgery. He then says you can't do that here. So I said okay I will ring in around 10 minutes. He agrees. I get home and then ring the surgery from there taking around 15 minutes to connect. I then am speaking to the same person as I was speaking to in reception. I ask him the same question as I did face to face. After all that I get told to ring back tomorrow at 8am.
Have you had any experiences such as this.
According to google reviews my surgery only has 2 star reviews from 51 people
Written by
Jelley93
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If I were you I wouldn’t know whether to laugh or cry but I would definitely find a new surgery as quickly as possible. Rudeness and inconsiderate, incompetent behaviour is definitely unacceptable. Is there an alternative you can use?
Was sat waiting for a blood test at my surgery. Another lady came in for her test, asked if she could make an appointment whilst she was there! Receptionist told her she wasn’t there to take appointments!!
lol , but Jelley, you should really give them a 4 star review for that... only 15 minutes to get through? .. on a bad day it would be an hour and then the elevator music would kick in and then the phone would go dead ..and you'd have to start again.
I have decided to get round all this silly 'you must phone in' bollocks by saying "i can't afford a phone at the moment " .....So far it's worked , they have no choice but to talk to me at reception.
Blimey Yes I haven't thought of that before. When I was there and he said call us. I don't think he expected me to call them while in front of him😂😂😂. No but in all seriousness its bad how patients cannot access basic NHS services due to king of the hill unapologetic receptionists. You could ring up for an appointment and they say okay three weeks from now. To which the sarcastic me would say okay ill attend if I aint dead by then. Their response would be if your'e dead please cancel the appointment so we can offer it someone else😂😂😂
last time i phoned to ask for an appointment for my adult daughter ,who has a job and can't spend all morning on the phone... they said 5 weeks!
To be fair to the 'receptionistas' i think it's probably horrible for them too... (apart from he ones who just enjoy the power)
I bumped into a friend who's daughter was at school with mine,, catching up on what they were doing now ... she said hers had recently taken a job as receptionist at our massive GP/health hub centre ... she left pretty sharpish cos being shouted at all day by distressed patients when you're not allowed to give them what they want , was horrible.
So i just try to play the system so they have an excuse to 'bend the rules' for me. (obviously it helps if your phone doesn't go off in your pocket while pleading poverty at the deck)
I do the same to the tax man who wants me to do my returns online... i keep writing them letters on paper, and saying i live up a tree with no internet.
Being of a mature age helps with this approach as we have gained our Phd in bullshit following a long course and have also undertaken extra studies in obfuscation.
Have had some really good laughs this morning reading the comments about getting an appointment. Not really a laughing matter, but I love the ingenuity.
In my GP surgery there is now a three week waiting list to get to speak to a doctor by telephone! If you want a face-to-face consultation you’ll be waiting for 5-6 weeks, by which time you’ll either be better or dead! During the lockdowns I think some GPs must have left as, instead of there being 7 GPs there are now only 4 with just as many patients to look after…
A typical privatisation tactic, run the service into the ground as much as possible and people will get so fed up they’ll start sourcing private service and the NHS will slowly be sold off. Then you can have the pleasure of the American system… bankruptcy because you got sick.
The thing is there are so many procedures and treatments the NHS no longer pays for that we already have a two tier system. We're getting less and less service but today NI contributions are increasing, allegedly to fund health and social care.
Earwax removal no longer available on the NHS, oh no, for the low low price of £50 you can allow a pharmacy assistant to poke about in your lugholes instead of a trained nurse. What's not to like? And if you can't afford it? Then get used to being a bit deaf.
My NHS surgery stopped doing earwax/syringing some years ago. You now have to self refer to get an appointment for it still on the NHS but not through the gp.
Yes there's usually quite a wait for appointments too.
The thing I find problematic is, if you self refer for ear syringing what if you're unaware that you've an infection and so syringing is to be avoided until the infection is treated?
A waste of your and the nurse's time and also taking an appointment that someone else could have had.
I'm not convinced it's a deliberate privatisation tactic. UK population has risen so much over the years and there has been so much pressure on docs to get us through and out the door asap. Years ago I had a lovely GP who would listen and genuinely try to help. I remember he said how he loved his job and wanted to carry on working as long as possible. But eventually things got him down so much that he did take early retirement. That was truly a sad day for his patients.
I agree ☝️ 40 years ago the UK population was around 58 million! Now around 68 million….. we are at stretching point 🤦♀️ No less nurses etc… just more people 🤦♀️🤦♀️
Is it any wonder that our local NHS hospital trusts (West Yorks and Harrogate) have announced a 17% increase in attendance at A&E last week and waiting times of upto 12 hours
Oh yes! I changed surgeries after the unbelievably poor experiences I had with mine. The original partners sold out - then the rest all left one by one as soon as they could and things went down from there on so it was a bit like yours, right down to the receptionist telling me I’d need to phone in, to rebook an appointment there had been a problem with and she couldn’t do it on that phone call (they phoned me) because she couldn’t transfer appointments from one day to another and there wasn’t any point phoning that day because the appointments had all gone.
I even googled recently to see if they were still practicing or it they had finally had their licence removed - they were haemorrhaging patients by that time - turned out they are still running but there was the funniest notice when you got online asking patients not to post bad reviews - to contact them first 🤣🤣🤣
Changing turned out to be really easy. Haven’t really needed to contact the new lot but my prescriptions comes through regularly and I’ve had all my covid and flu vaccinations through them. It was just very disappointing having to change my surgery having been with them since 1983 but none of the original staff were left and even the replacement staff had gone too.
This could be my practice too. Phone at 8am only, can wait for 20mins for pickup, only to be told all same day appts gone. Up to 4wks for non urgent care appts. Majority are phone only ring backs. Haven't seen GP since March 2020.
The practice run the majority of surgeries in the town, so not possible to change practice.
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