"Terrible surgery"

I have been with this surgery for a hunger of years and can honestly say it is going swiftly down hill! Firstly trying to get an appointment over the phone is near impossible, when you do get through you're told to come in for the daily walk in and sit down for sometimes hours, to be seen by a doctor; and they are very reluctant to give set appointment slots, trying to encourage you to walk in and sit around for hours. When you do get to the surgery they have a ridiculous glass screen making you have to bend down to even talk to the receptionist. Trying to be discreet is impossible because you have to near on shout for them to hear you through the glass, and for you to be able to hear them with the noise of the surroundings and the glass barricade they need to shout too- this is find extremely unprofessional as anybody standing nearby can just hear all of your medical business. Not to mention the fact that the receptionst staff (bar one) need a serious training workshop on how to deliver good customer service. I was once told by one member of staff to 'bog off elsewhere if I didn't like it' when I said that I needed an appointment and didn't want to sit around waiting for hours when I had a very bad case of haemorrhoids, and two small babies under 2! Overall the surgery needs a re vamp. A whole new set of reception staff that are customer service trained and have no emotional or previous experience within this surgery tainting their apporach to patients; the way in which the appointment system is run is really suited to the staff so they can not have any expectation when it comes to wait times they can just say 'it is a walk in, you'll be seen as soon as somebody is available' whereas if they had an appointment they would be managed on that expectation to meet the time slots. The doctors are okay, seem to see a different one each time I go so can't really comment on the general standard of care but I do know I have never spent more than 5 minutes with one, I am generally in and out even when it's a serious issue. They are very quick to have you in and out and not really listen to the depth of your problem which sometimes can be helped by somebody listening to you.

I would not recommend any new patients to this surgery, you can find many many better ones within the catchment area.

One last point I would like to make is that there are a lot of drug addicts that use this surgery and pharmacy (next door) for a drug program which I feel is not very nice for patients. Sometimes they come in clearly on drugs and sometimes drunk, they smell or alcohol and can be very intimidating especially when I have my young children with me. I feel that programmes such as these should be run in a centre specifically for that purpose and not put amongst general patients l of the surgery!