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Never get an appointment, reception staff rude

Story from nhs.uk

"Never get an appointment, reception staff rude"

About: Cranbrook Medical Practice

Can NEVER get an appointment unless you plan on being ill in advance, even for my children, all of which are under 5, was told I had to wait 9 days for an appointment for my 12 week old baby when she had conjunctivitis because that was the next available appointment! I understand the surgery has gone from serving 200 patients to over 2000 but if you cannot offer and supply the basic level of carethen STOP TAKING ON NEW PATIENTS, you can’t deal with the ones you’ve got let alone more! It’s ridiculous. One receptionist has been rude and spoken in an unappreciated tone more than once, I’m not a simpleton, and I definitely don’t need to be spoken down to when asking basic questions, so I would appreciate not being treated like one, I think people forget that actually they are the first face of the practice and set the tone for the whole surgery. I wouldn’t allow my 5 year old to talk to people they way I’ve been belittled in there. The doctors and nurses on the other hand could not be better! Always go above and beyond and are so friendly...when you actually get a chance to see them...10/10 on that front, the rest however, leaves a lot to be desired, and don’t get me started on being closed for 2 hours for lunch?! Who needs that long to eat a sandwich?

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Responses

Response from Cranbrook Medical Practice 5 years ago
Cranbrook Medical Practice

Submitted on 12/12/2018 at 15:38
Published on nhs.uk at 16:05

Firstly, we’re sorry for not having responded to your feedback before and disappointed to hear the practice has fallen short of your expectations. While it is not our policy to discuss individual cases on a public forum such as this, if you would like to email ddooh.governance@nhs.net with your details we will happily look into any concerns you raise to see if there is anything we might have done better and, moreover, any learning that may be gleaned from this

In the meantime, we would like to take this opportunity to respond to some of the more general points you have made. To be clear, where a baby or young child is felt to be in urgent need of an appointment we would always find a slot for them or, should this prove impossible, ensure that a GP gets in touch to assess the situation as a matter of urgency.

With four GPs sharing the working week, regrettably there will be occasions when patients with a preference for a particular GP face a short wait, in which case they will routinely be offered the option of seeing an alternative GP or Nurse. In addition, we can also offer a number of bookable same-day appointments [either at the practice or over the phone] which are allocated after we have triaged over the phone to ascertain the degree of urgency.

As things stand, we are satisfied we have sufficient staff and resources to deal with our patient numbers. However, as you might imagine, this is under near-constant review and should the need arise we will seek to employ more clinicians.

With regard to the practice having a two-hour lunch break, this is not only to allow our clinicians time to eat, but to ensure they have some protected time for administrative tasks as well as the opportunity to complete any home visits.

While we hope this response has provided you with some reassurance, do please feel free to email ddooh.governance@nhs.net if you would like us to look into the concerns you have raised any further.

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