"Refused emergency appointment."

As a small rural surgery, we strive to give the best service we can and I'm sorry that we did not meet your expectations on this occasion.

On arriving at the Surgery at 8am, you requested an appointment for 9.20am.

You were offered an appointment with our Nurse who specialises in asthma at 11am the same morning which was the first appointment available.

Unfortunately you felt this was inconvenient as you would have to travel to work and come back later and so you declined and demanded an earlier appointment.

It was explained that there were no earlier appointments but the appointment we had in 3 hours time was available if you would like this.

You requested to be squeezed in earlier but I said I would not move any Patients already booked in to allow this.

When you asked what would happen if you collapsed in the street and if they asked why you didn't book a GP appointment, what would I say, I said that you had been offered an appointment for that morning and that we were not an emergency service, which we are not.

Had you shown any signs at all of breathing difficulty whilst arguing with us at the reception desk for 20 minutes about getting an earlier appointment, you would of course have had immediate treatment from any available clinician or our first aid trained staff.

However, forgetting to order your medication and the inconvenience of having to go to work and come back for an appointment is not an emergency and I had no concerns whilst talking to you about your immediate health.

I can confirm that I couldn't 'nip in' to ask the Dr to do a prescription for you as the Dr wasn't on the premises at that time and on arrival would have had a clinic full of Patients to attend to.

At no point were you told that anything was 'not our problem'.

Patient health and wellbeing is the reason we come to work.

If another service is ever more appropriate to deal with an issue, you would be directed to them but never, ever told that something is 'not our problem'.

I'm sorry you feel we were being obstructive and I appreciate that sometimes Patients forget to order their medications however, you were repeatedly offered an appointment with a specialist, within 3 hours, which you repeatedly declined.

You were told that a prescription could be put through for you at 11.30am that day instead of asking you to give 48 hours notice as all our other Patients are asked to and I had tried to call your local pharmacy to see if they could help but they hadn't opened at that time of the morning.

Sadly, I'm not sure what more I could have done to help.

I did feel you were rude and demanding with unrealistic expectations but we still did our best to help you.

I'm sorry this wasn't good enough.

I’m disappointed you would not recommend us as a surgery but if you feel you would like to move to an alternative surgery, we can of course help with this too.

Kind regards

Admin Practice Manager