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Terrible

Story from nhs.uk

"Terrible"

About: Parklands Medical Practice

The service received from the staff at these doctors are appalling. I don’t even ring for appointments anymore because I have lost all trust and respect for the staff there. I have been at this doctors all my life and my family before me so I am familer with the staff and surgery. My first disappointment with the doctors was when I was 5months pregnant. I was in agony and thought I was having a miscarrigae and it took me 3 days to get an appointment. The hospital wouldn’t see me because I was about 2 days off being 20 weeks pregnant and I would of been sat in A&E for god knows how long. When I got there it was clear to see by the staff that I was really ill and to the point a receptionist asked a member of my family how I was because I looked so poorly. The doctor then sent me home with senecot tablets because I was constipated. With in 24 hrs I was taken to hospital with acute appendicitis. I however did explain all my symptoms to the doctor but never the less they new best and said I was constipated. The second time I had got an appointment for having a water infection. I had called up at 8am like instructed to do so by the staff at reception and made an appointment for just before 12pm. I arrived at 11.30 and was still sat there by 12.55 waiting to be seen by the doctor. I asked the receptionist much longer it will be, their reply was how long is a peice if string. I then went on to say I have been waiting an hour do you have any idea of the length of time. Their second reply was there is nothing I can do and looked away. Absolutely disgusting attitude for just a simple question. No apology, no empathy just that they couldn’t be bothered to even look at me let alone speak to me. Then the third time I went was over endometriosis which gives me extreme abominable pain and can varey form day to day or week to week, it’s very unpredictable. Again I called in the morning, got an appointment the same day. I was being over seen by the hospital and doctors at the time trying out different medication to over come the pain. The doctor suggested to me that the pain was all in my head and sent me home with some cocodomol. What they had said didn’t even sink till I had got home and sat for a while as I wasn’t happy with the outcome of my appointment and still being in a lot of pain. My thoughts on the surgery is that over time the staff have become extremely rude. Even when you call to book and appointment the staff have attitude and you can tell by the tone of there voice they don’t even want to have the conversation with you. Before you wasn’t able to book an appointment for the same day if you called after 8am but was able book an appointment with in the next 2 weeks or earlier if there was a cancellation. Now you can’t get one in 2 weeks at all. The only option you have is to call at 8am and hope you get through. Some weeks I have called 5 days in a row and not been able to get through after trying to call the doctors for a full hour. This surgery terrible.

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Responses

Response from Parklands Medical Practice 6 years ago
Parklands Medical Practice

Submitted on 22/12/2017 at 11:43
Published on nhs.uk at 12:31

Thank you for taking the time to feedback – please understand that by feeding back on this message board the practice has no way of being able to identify any of the patients involved and being able to try to understand and rectify any of the particular issues identified here – I would really like to talk to you about the issues you have raised about the care you have received from our clinical staff. As I don’t know which staff were involved I have no way of being able to address this in a meaningful way at the moment.

I can take this opportunity to explain about our system for managing same day acute medically necessary appointments.

We will see any patient as an acute, emergency appointment if they identify this to the reception team. As you can imagine, these need to be squeezed in around full clinics of patients who have booked an appointment and who would strongly prefer not to be kept waiting. So this is always a judgement call, and while there are no set rules for these eventualities very young children and very elderly adults may often get prioritised as when those groups of people are very ill they can deteriorate very quickly.

Emergency appointments may well be seen during the clinic session if a booked patient doesn’t attend, or is running late, or if the receptionist can see that they are deteriorating and lets the doctor concerned know, but there may well be times when people will need to wait for over an hour. We do review these processes from time to time and this is the fairest approach we can see for all our patients.

However, there is never any excuse to be rude and I will raise the points you have made at our next receptionist meeting and ask them to consider how difficult is to sit and wait when you are in pain.

Lastly, you are right, having reviewed the use of our pre-bookable appointments we have decided, in discussion with our Patient Participation Group, that we should reduce the length of time in advance an appointment can be booked to one week. We have found that suits more people and patients who would like to be seen earlier aren’t booking an advance appointment as a back up and then repeatedly ringing to try and get an earlier one too (often the back up one would not be cancelled and ended up being wasted).

As I am sure you are aware with the coverage in the press and other media, access to GP services across the country is difficult at the moment. Availability of appointments for people with restrictions to when they can access services is a particular issue that has yet to be addressed either locally or nationally.

In Bradford we are looking at ways the practices can work together to provide more choices for patients who, for whatever reason, struggle to attend during our core hours of 8 am to 6.30 pm Monday to Friday. However, it is fair to say, that currently demand for all primary care services does outweigh availability.

Kind regards,

Fiona Purdie

Business Manager

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