"Utterly unconvincing"

Anything else?

For starters, I understand the trials and tribulations of the NHS at the moment but I was totally unimpressed with my visit to the walk-in center. Seeing as I had to wait a few weeks for an appointment with my GP in regards to my stomach and anxiety troubles I thought I'd see if I could get any satisfactory assistance from the walk-in center in the meantime.

I arrived at 10:45am to see around 8 other distressed-looking individuals waiting before me. Their obvious unhappiness rather made me feel uneasy at first as I assumed they must be exceptionally concerned about their health, but now I'm leaning more towards the notion that they were simply sick of waiting for what must have been hours. There were only two nurses seeing to patients in the treatment room, and I could accept the wait were it not for the fact that the loss of time appeared to be symptomatic of the nurses desire for a hot drink in between every patient. One of them seemed to waste a significant period of time by walking down the wrong corridors before correcting herself, seemingly she didn't have her head screwed on.

I finally was seen to at 13:15pm, only to be told that no tests could be performed. This confirmed what I suspected but if I didn't have to personally suggest to the nurse that I should have my blood pressure checked then the entire 'appointment' would have basically been a chat that in essence, could be distilled to the sentence 'Yeah, you'll have to just see your GP'.

I'm fairly fortunate in the sense that I've not suffered through much bad health through the years so can't comment too much about how hospitals should be run. But to me my visit to the Royal Infirmary confirms my suspicion that unless you have abject symptoms that are clearly visible to the naked eye, you're going to get fobbed off until it's possibly too late.