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I found it very, very upsetting

Posted By ntond

"I found it very, very upsetting"

About: Bellbrooke Surgery

(as a service user),

Attended for a physio appointment, referred by a different GP. Got there at 12, my appointment time. The waiting room was empty and two receptionists were working. One person was queueing. I waited behind them. They soon went to the other receptionist and I waited in front of the nearest one for 15 minutes, watching them take a phone call. I thought they seemed quite rude on the phone but didn't want to judge too much because I didn't know the other side. But they kept saying things like - No, that's not what I asked,  You should know this, and I can't help you if you can't answer me. In what I felt was a very rude, annoyed tone that made me uncomfortable, and then eventually told them they couldn't help and they should go to a walk-in centre.

After listening to this for 15 minutes, with only one other patient in the queue behind us, they called us forward. Looked at the physio appointments, and said I was too late. I expressed I had been standing quite literally directly in front of them for the last fifteen minutes. They told the physio -  They say they've been here since 12 but I don't know, they might have been, as if they hadn't been able to see me standing in front of them. All they could say was -  you can see we're very busy, and to be honest, no, I couldn't. The waiting room was empty. There was one person behind me. This receptionist was on the phone to one person for 15 minutes. I don't consider that to be too busy to pause for 10 seconds and ask if the person standing in front of you has an appointment.

I am autistic and in a very volatile mental health state right now so I got very upset and had to leave. I do not want to get angry at NHS staff because I completely understand the stress and the workload. My partner tried to express to the receptionist that they had upset me and to be aware of how they were speaking to people, and they told them to talk to their manager because they didn't have time for us.

I found it very, very upsetting to be told I don't know if you were here by someone I was standing in front of, as if I literally do not matter to them whatsoever.  If not for my partner I would have left the surgery immediately not rebooked and appointment as I felt like I'd done everything right and was being told I was a liar. I've been waiting for this appointment since January.  I will never come back here, I am making sure my physio is elsewhere.

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Responses

Response from Andy Haigh, Business Manager, Bellbrooke Surgery yesterday
Andy Haigh
Business Manager,
Bellbrooke Surgery

Submitted on 08/05/2025 at 12:39
Published on Care Opinion at 17:00

Thank you for your feedback and I'm sorry to hear that you found the experience of visiting the practice upsetting.

We do regular training with our staff in terms of how they deal with patient enquiries and general customer service training and do feedback any complaints or compliments - although I'm not sure this forum will be a particularly accurate guide to what we receive as I'm not sure many of our patients are aware of it and our patient base does not tend to engage with us via online sources a great deal. I hope the feedback helps us develop the service and improve the customer experience.

I understand why a practice may not look busy if there aren't actually many people in a queue - but I can assure you we are always busy. Our phone lines open on a morning with up to 1000 calls in the first hour which 5-6 receptionists try to handle and the phone never stops all day. Other receptionists will be working in the back of the practice office as well as those at the front desk. We ask our reception staff to focus on the telephones due to the level of demand so there will only be 1 person working the queue.

I am not surprised that someone couldn't confirm the times you came in to the practice and certainly we wouldn't encourage staff to interrupt a call to just check on someone in the queue - many of our calls can be complex due to language barriers and really need to be the sole area of concentration for staff.

We don't actually provide the physio service - we allow use of our building space to deliver for all practices in our area - this in itself isn't an issue but it does mean that different IT systems are employed to run the appointment ledgers for this service. In turn this means the technology we have on site to prevent our patients hitting the problem outlined here - that is they can sign in to announce themselves as arriving for an appointment without queueing - isn't available.

I can't really add much else as I don't have the detail needed. It would be more helpful to provide us with feedback direct to the practice on the day or quickly thereafter as we can then not only make more of what we're told but can investigate more thoroughly. I'm not clear when this comment was originally sent in but it mentions waiting for an appointment since January - these appointments should be booked no more than 5 days in advance - so has the comment been outstanding since then? Or has your own practice in making this booking done something unusual?

I hope you find the experience far better if you do come back. We are one of the practices locally who have engaged with learning disability, autism and other patient groups to try to make the environment more friendly and approachable and we will continue to work to do that

Andy Haigh, Business Manager

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