"The doctors are good if only you could speak to..."

The front desk is extremely and unnecessarily rude and uncaring, I don't understand why people like this want to work in health care and further i don't understand how such uncompassionate people get the job, but let's be clear and fair... the doctors know what they are doing and are kind and compassionate once you can get to see them... There are 2 incidents involving my wife that spring to mind...

First time was when my wife was having a renal colic, this is the severe pain you get when you're having kidney stones... we were unable to get an appointment over the phone, we called an emergency help line instead since the pain was severe they said that they needed us to get a referral from the GP in order to get seen at the hospital by the right doctors and it should not be a problem, when we told them that we'd already tried the GP but they said "if you're really in that much pain you should just go to the hospital" emergency line said go back to the GP and if they are still refusing to make an emergency appointment, have the GP call the emergency help line and they will explain to them that this case is urgent and we need to be seen... walk to the GP in person, they still refuse to make an appointment still seeing my wife in severe pain... I then explain the emergency help line told us you need to take us and if you don't understand that I am to call them back and you can speak to them over the phone so you understand this is urgent, they then accept this and leave us waiting in pain sat down in their waiting room for about 45 minutes while every other person in the room is seen before us, wife is in tears and finally I get upset enough to say sternly.. that this is really an emergency and if the they will not help shall we just go directly to the hospital where someone will take us seriously? Finally the doctor see's us and is shocked that we were kept waiting and said next time insist to see me straight away!? We were given an instant referral to the hospital which lead to surgery.

The second time my wife was pregnant and we went on holiday to Spain to visit her family, she was not feeling good so we went to the hospital there and unfortunately the babies heart had stopped and she had to have surgery to remove the fetus, we fly back to the UK the next day and were told we need to have a follow up scan and check up to make sure everything is ok within 5 days.. they gave us release papers but obviously and unfortunately they were in spanish and we were not able to obtain a translation. We speak to GP office and they simply ridicule my wife for not having a translation tell her they can't help because the papers are not in english and refuse to make an appointment... long story short, we call the hospital instead who make us an instant and tell us 1 of their doctors speak spanish and can make a translation.

I really hope they read these reviews and sincerely think about how they run their practice.