On 06/02/2021 11:55, charles wrote:
In article ,
alan_m wrote:
On 30/01/2021 18:53, John Rumm wrote:


That does seem rather excessive - I can imagine a good number of 80+
year olds would have trouble standing about in the cold for that amount
of time!

But isn't the advice not to turn up to early? That's the whole point of
the appointment times. However, if you are used to the NHS hospital way
of assigning appointments in normal times you may come to have come to
the conclusion that everyone has been given the same appointment time
and it's fist come first served.

A great many years ago, I was given a 9am appointment for an NHS fracture
clinic. At 9.30, when there just apperaed to be more people arriving and
no-one being seen, I asked at the desk when I would be seen. "HE doesn't
come in until 10am, but HE's a busy person, so we don't like to keep HIM
waiting." By the time HE deigned to put in an appearance there were 15
people (perhaps busy ones) waiting.

Hopefully that attitude has changed.

Nearly 30 years ago my sister had a couple of warts on her fingers, that
she could not get rid of and had a few appointments to have them frozen
with Nitrogen.

I gave her a lift and waited with her. It was clear that everyone had
the same appointment time. What was worse was that she was the first in
and her notes went in the basket, followed by those of each new arrival
- and they just took them in turn from the basket and so she was seen
last, some 2-1/2 hours later.

Worse was the Manchester Royal Eye Hospital. My father has had to go
there numerous times and my mother a few times. Then my wife needed to
go a dozen times. Every single time was the same - appointments ranging
from 08:45 to 10:15 and each one seen at 12:00 or later. They always ran
hours late, but still booked everyone in early. On one memorable
occasion, we arrived at 08:30 and weren't seen until 15:45 ... clinic
was due to finish at 13:00.

I had to attend Wythenshawe hospital (they'd told me I had cancer and
were going to investigate with a camera down into my lungs and another
in through the chest wall) and to take biopsies to determine grade and
stage - luckily it turned out their diagnosis was wrong! Anyway, I had
to come in on Thursday evening, ready for theatre at 11:00 on Friday.
The only reason for not coming in of Friday morning? If I was not in the
bed on Thursday night, it might get given to someone else and then
they'd have to cancel my theatre spot! What was wrong with a simple
"Reserved" sign?

I've also lost days of pay when I have arranged my week to accommodate
appointments, only for them to cancel them at the last minute - on one
occasion, having taken the day off and booked one of our sons into an
expensive music practical day, so as to be free to take his older
brother for the results of a vital brain scan that we'd been waiting
for, they phoned me 20 minutes before the appointment (we live 5 minutes
from the hospital and hadn't set off), to tell us that the Consultant
was on holiday, his whole clinic was cancelled and they'd forgotten to
phone his patients the week before! Even worse than the time and money
lost, my wife had had to cancel all her own patients to be able to come
to the appointment together!

Over the years I have lost many days of pay due to suddenly cancelled,
changed or late running appointments, but no-one seems to care about the
consequences of it all for patients or their relatives/carers and we are
just expected to put up with it.

The most recent one was just over a year ago, when I took my wife for
injections to her hands and knees, only to find that the doctor who was
giving them wasn't there - the first the staff knew of it was when the
wondered why the waiting room was full and the numbers not going down!
It turned out he'd left as his daughter was ill, but hadn't bothered to
tell anyone!