Yesterday, after waiting for just over an hour in a doctor’s examining room, I got up, found the doctor and told him that my time was as valuable to me as his to him. I pointed out that I arrived on time for my appointment and that an hour was simply too long to wait in order to spend maybe ten minutes in company. And then I walked out.
I think that from now on, I will do the same to every doctor who keeps me waiting for more than fifteen or twenty minutes.
I feel your pain, but it’s not always the doctor’s or the staff’s fault that (s)he couldn’t see you at the designated time. A couple of problem patients can irreversibly throw the schedule off for the entire day. That’s the excuse I’ve heard anyway.
What annoys me about seeing the doctor is to how many people I have to tell my problem. #1 I call an 800 number operator who requires the information. Her extensive medical training tells her that blood in the urine is pretty urgent, so I get a local number for same day service. #2 I call the local number and have to explain to her that I have blood in my urine. #3 I come to the appointment and the receptionist asks why I need to see the doctor, so I tell her. #4 When the nurse takes my blood pressure and weight, she requires the information, and #5 I tell my doctor (apparently the only person in the office that doesn’t know that I have blood in my urine).
I’m curious as to what the doctor was doing when you found him? Was he with a patient, or was he socializing with the nurses? If he wasn’t doing anything, then I say, “Good going.”, but I have to agree with Baraqiyal in some respects. As a patient, we don’t really know what a doctor’s schedule is like and there could be any number reasons why he had to make you wait (Although I agree that an hour is way too long, at least without anyone checking up on you or letting you know what was going on.). Personally I err on the side of caution and figure that the doc probably was just getting caught up on paper work or researching a tough case.
LouisB- I learned this lesson the hard way - don’t try a stunt like that if you ever plan on coming back to the same doctor. especially if the doctor is a proctologist or urologist. :eek: YOUCH!
Baraqiyal, have you ever had to make one of those calls from work? I have, because naturally the 800 number is only staffed from 9 to 5. Cubicles are not conducive to private conversations.
Hunched over phone:
“Um, hello, I need a referral. Why? Well, [sub]I have blood in my urine.[/sub]”
I really don’t see that as a slam on the Doc. It was an honest assessment of the system that kept LouisB twiddling thumbs for 60 minutes. It maybe wasn’t the doc’s fault, or the other patient’s fault, or the nurses fault, but really it doesn’t matter. An hour is an hour and that is too long to wait, unless you happened to be bleeding profusely. Good move. I pull out of line at drive thru’s if it takes too long, even IF I have ordered.
Dragwyr, I found the doctor as he was preparing to open the door to another exam room. He told he had two more patients to see before he got to me and that I should be patient. Arrogant prick. I was polite during the brief conversation, which was more than I could say for him. The purpose of the appointment was for him to review with me the results of a colonoscopy that he performed. I had already received via mail a form stating that everything was okay but due to my age, I should consider going on a high fiber diet. I doubt very much that I would have spent more than ten minutes in his company if he had seen me. Besides which, a full report has been sent to my family doctor and she can explain anything that needs explaining the next time I see her. I doubt I will see this guy again.
I wish that doctors and consultants would expose themselves to the system as a patient, just to get some perspective on just how bad this problem is.
A doctor can go on apologising all he/she likes about all of the distractions and intrusions into the time supposedly reserved for consultations. But from the patient’s point of view, being made to wait inordinately long for a ten minute appointment is just downright rudeness.
Even the doctors know that the day plan they start with at 0900 will be blown out of the water by 1030. So why do they persist in such unrealistic schedules?
No-one denies that doctors have extraordinary workloads, compounded by constant interruptions and distractions. Is it too much to ask that schedules change so that time is built in to cater for this? Why can’t they settle on dealing with less patients per hour, so that those they do consult are seen punctually?
It’s not only the doctors. A couple of years ago (New Year’s Eve - now there’s an evening I’m not going to forget) my buddy and I were putting the finishing touches to our model remote control plane. [sub]I now know this was stupid.[/sub]. Anyway, to cut a long story short, he was holding the plane, I’d fuelled it and had a chicken-finger (large rubber finger-cover) on and was trying to start it. Eventually, it took. This sucker spins from 0 to about 10000rpm in about 1/2 second. My buddy is so surprised we’ve managed to get the thing going he lets go. I instinctively put my hands out as the plane lurches toward me - you get the picture. It was gruesome. I could see all the tendons in the palm of my hand, blood’s everywhere and I’d lost all feeling to my little finger.
cut to
Accident & Emergency at the local hospital. It’s early yet, only a couple of people sitting down. Approach desk. It’s bloody obvious what the problem is, both literally and metaphorically. Duty nurse pulls out a 5 page form and we start at page 1. JESUS CHRIST I’M BLEEDING OUT HERE. (Actually I wasn’t, but it looked like it). She needed not only the obvious details (where I live etc), WHICH YOU COULD ASK ME AFTERWARDS, but where I work. Like that has to do with the price of bananas. Plus about 500 stupid-ass questions which admittedly might be useful if you’re doing a study into accidents in the home, but really really now is not the time. My wife noticed the time we went in and the time it took to fill this daft form, and it was nearly 15 minutes.
Sheesh. I didn’t realise 'til I wrote that that I clearly still have issues. Off to therapy.
tiggeril, I don’t suggest that doctors restructure their entire system. I would suggest that once it becomes obvious that the patient is in for an unusually long wait, the patient be informed of that, given a new (approximate) time at which the doctor will see him and the option of waiting or rescheduling—if rescheduling is chosen, there should be no charge for the current office visit. I paid my co-pay on arrival, so I am out $20.00, plus the time I lost, plus my aggravation. I doubt I will ever see the money again, don’t you? IF someone had only stuck their head in the examing room and explained the situation to me, I would probably have continued to wait. As it was, the rudeness of keeping me there, in the dark, finally got to me.
I know for a FACT that my doctor’s office routinely schedules appointments 15 minutes apart, and tries to “work in” anyone else who calls. That is completely unrealistic scheduling and I regularly have to wait 30-60 minutes to see my doctor. The only reason I keep going to her is that I like her as a doctor and she is also fairly convenient to home. She does take her time with me as a patient, and presumably with the rest of her patients, so that makes the every 15 minutes thing particularly unrealistic. I assume that it’s some “company rule” that makes them schedule that way…more $$$ from more patients, regardless of how long they have to wait…
Here’s what I do - before I leave for the appointment, I call the doctor’s office to see if appointments are running on-time, and I adjust my departure time accordingly.
I’ve also found that a much tighter ship is run at places like Northwestern Memorial Hospital (a prestigious teaching hospital in Chicago) than at the suburban doctors’ offices. The office staff is better and more organized. The doctors spend significantly more time with you (specialists I’ve seen have spent close to an hour or more with me). It may be an hour’s drive, but the quality of care and service is worth it, and I’ve never been kept waiting longer than 15 minutes.