My daughter has had an upset tum now for nearly a week, and talking to her last night I said I would call our Doctors surgery tomorrow morning and 'try' and get her an appointment, here's how the phone call went:
Me: 'Hello, I'm just calling to see if my daughter could see the Doctor today'
Lady at the surgery: 'Sorry, but all our appointments are taken, if you call at 8am tomorrow you may get one of the emergency appointments we leave free.'
Me:'Could I make an appointment for tomorrow now?'
LATS: No, we're fully booked apart from the emergency slots that are available from 8am.'
Me: 'Well could I make an appointment for Friday?'
LATS: 'Sorry, I can only take appointments for tomorrow'
Me: 'Don't we have a catch 22 situation here? I can only call at 8am tomorrow morning and am not guaranteed an appointment?'
LATS: 'I can book you one for next week'
Me: 'But the point is my daughter is ill NOW'
LATS: 'I'm sorry that's all I can do'
Me: 'OK, Thank you'
Now this could be just me being a bit irritable first thing in the morning, but doesn't that stink? All this rubbish about being able to see your doctor within 24 hours is a load of old hogwash! This has been going on at my surgery for some time now, and I'm quite sick of it. I think it may be time to look for another Doctor!
5 comments:
don't you have other choices? On my insurance there are about 25+ doctors, and when I was checking doctors the first thing is availability. If a doctor is always booked and too popular, it won't help me when I am sick.
I guess in the UK you also need to make sure that they aren't Muslim terrorists!
I sympathaise its getting like that everywhere, its usually more good luck than judgement that will get an appointment when you need it.
If your are desperate its sometimes a good idea to go to the local hospital emergency department.
For Spidey - In the UK everyone is registered with a surgery which will have a number of doctors depending on the size of the area. It is now difficult getting appointments to see any of the doctors.
We do have an emergency surgery for after hours, I've told my daughter to call that if I cant get an appointment.
White Rose Boy is correct Spidey, we have a National Health service here in the UK that is free at source (we do pay a tax for it though) So we register with a doctors surgery (containing maybe a group of Doctors, my surgery for instance has 2), and only go to that one all the time. It is easy to change doctors of course, that is if you have another surgery in the area.
woo hoo this bloody thing has worked!!!!!! i think you will find that most of the docs are like this. a big cause of the problem is people making appointments and not keeping them, my wife is a practise nurse and is forever coming home with stories of how people are not turning up. she had so many people missing one week that she could have seen another 22 people that week, if only people who intended turning up made appointments then there would be places left for genuine cases. did you try NHS direct? or try the out of hours surgery, if you ring they will let you attend a surgery that may not neccessarily be your own.
Aha! Welcome back Phil. I did find out the out of hours number for her, actually that surgery is pretty close to where she lives.
The thing is though, this happens EVERY time you want to make an appointment, and you don't get treated sometimes as you seem to be feeling better and let it run. I've been told to go to the A&E at Hull Royal b4 today.
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