"Putting the interests of patients first"

I have bad arthritic hands and over the past few years I have been having cortisone injections twice a year, for the pain. This year, I seem to not have as severe a problem as usual.

My regular appointment was due. I thought it not ethical to take up an appointment or have a treatment that I did not genuinely need. My plan was to contact appointments or the surgeon, suggest that someone else should have that appointment, and that I could perhaps fit in in 3 months time or so when I expected I would really need it.

I started off contacting the consultant’s secretary, explained my thinking and asked if she could facilitate that. I pointed out that I did not want to do a straightforward cancellation whereby I would finish up at the bottom of the waiting list, some 7 months or so away. She understood, agreed that that was sensible, but said that I should contact appointments.

For the next two days I tried frequently to contact appointments with no success. I also made 2 more calls to the secretary and also tried other numbers on the hospital site. A number of different personnel also tried to connect me to appointments with no success.

Eventually, the medical secretary sent them an e-mail asking them to contact me, which they eventually did. I explained the situation again and my thinking. However, there was no way that they would cooperate. If I wanted to postpone my appointment, I would have to go to the end of the list. They left me no choice, but to keep my appointment.

After discussion with my family I decided to do that, against my judgement, but I decided to not have any injections but to discuss with the consultant the possibility of going private, having the injections when I needed them, not within a rigid NHS system, not when it suited them and the appointment system.

This I did. The registrar whom I saw was really understanding, saw no need to go private and immediately offered to change my appointment himself. There and then he did what I wanted, set up an appointment a reasonable time ahead, when I would be likely to be in need of it. Common sense.

However, I had to take up an appointment to get that to happen, I had to deprive someone else of seeing the consultant sooner, when perhaps they really needed it. A waste of my time and the NHS time, not to mention the fact that it took me hours on the phone beforehand. I know that the appointments staff need to have a system, but surely there has to be some kind of leeway to suit patient needs.

I imagine that if I find myself in that situation again that the outcome will be precisely the same.