At 9.00am on Tuesday I was phoned by one of the nurses from the Urology Department at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Woolwich. They asked me to go for a short consultation at 11.00am and to collect a prescription for the first stage of my treatment. Sue and I drove to the hospital, and by 11.00am we were sitting in the reception area for the Urology Outpatients Clinic, waiting for my appointment. The nurse was running a little late, but by 11.45am I had been seen, and we then set of to the hospital pharmacy to collect my prescription.
That is where things began to go a bit awry.
On reaching the pharmacy, I had to join a queue to hand my prescription in. This took fifteen minutes ... but when I got to the front of the queue, I was told that the prescribing doctor had not written their name in the correct box on the prescription form and that I had to go back to the Urology clinic to get this error corrected!
I did as requested ... and then had to re-join the queue to hand my now correctly completed prescription in. I then had to wait for a further forty-five minutes for the pharmacist to complete my prescription. During this hiatus, Sue went off to find somewhere outside to sit.
By the time I left the hospital and re-joined Sue, it was after 1.00pm. On the way back to our car I tried to pay for our parking, only to discover that the single coin payment machine in the whole car park was full and would not process any further payments. I then tried to pay online ... but as I did not have the parking company's app on my telephone and I hadn't got my credit card with me, I could not pay! I now risk a £80.00 'fine' for non-payment, so I took a photo of the machine showing the fact that I had tried to pay but was unable to do so.
The icing on this particular day's cake came later in the day when I went to my GP's surgery to hand in the paperwork the hospital had given me for my doctor so that I could arrange an appointment to have an injection that will form part of my treatment. (I have to take a course of tablets for four weeks, and halfway through I have to have an injection of another drug that will work with the tablets.)
When I spoke to the receptionist at the GP surgery, they told me that they were not able to arrange an appointment unless they had the drug ... but they were not sure if they had to give me the prescription for the drug so that I can get from the pharmacy and take it to them or if they could order it directly.
The receptionist consulted the practice manager, who then had to discuss the situation with the person in charge of processing prescriptions. They eventually came up with a solution; the GP surgery will order the drug directly and then contact me to arrange a date and time for my appointment.
The thing that I found disturbing was the fact that they had no idea how long it would take for the dug to be delivered. I kept repeating that for the drug to be effective, I needed to have the injection on Wednesday 3rd May. The practice manager assured me that she didn't expect there would be a problem ... but I was not convinced when I left the surgery and won't be until they confirm my appointment.
A shame Franz Kafka is not around to write your experiences as a novel.
ReplyDeleteTradgardmastare,
DeleteWhat I find really annoying is the adherence by nitpicking bureaucrats to operating procedures that have no flexibility.
All the best,
Bob
What a palaver! Though there be more spanners in the works than one would think possible . . . keep the faith!
ReplyDeleteDonjondo,
DeleteWhat should have been a quick and simple visit to the hospital turned into a bureaucratic nightmare. Luckily, the medical staff are excellent!
All the best,
Bob
That is a disturbing story Bob...The NHS is great when it works but so often it is just a bureaucratic nightmare. I sincerely hope your injection is on time. Regards.
ReplyDeleteTony Adams,
DeleteIt reminded me of what it was like to work in education, with frontline staff working as hard as possible to deliver an excellent service, and administrators and some support staff seemingly doing everything in their power to undermine those efforts.
I’ll get there .. whatever it takes!
All the best,
Bob
BOB,
ReplyDeleteWoe upon woe! What a day for you and Sue- just unbelievable. Certainly hope this first day is the worst of it and everything from here on goes smoothly for you. Hope you are well there- take care- best wishes. KEV.
Kev Robertson (Kev),
DeleteIt would be very easy to get annoyed about what happened … but what would be the point? It’s easier just to look back and laugh about the idiocy and silliness of the whole situation.
Today has been a better day … and I hope it will be the first of many!
All the best,
Bob
Ugh, paying for parking with apps! I took my boys to the climbing gym in Hoboken, NJ yesterday. We found parking and I had my location service turned on but the app insisted I was in Houston, Texas. Then they double charged me!
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you're getting treated for your ailments but to put you through an emotional wringer like that is uncivilized.
Mr. Pavone,
DeleteThe app is supposed to make it easier to pay for parking, but I don’t like putting an app that I might only use a couple of times on my phone.
How could your app mistake Hoboken for Houston? That makes no sense whatsoever.
The medical staff that have dealt with me have all been top notch, but some of the non-medical staff seem to take little pride or interest in their work, and this is reflected by the level of service they provide.
All the best,
Bob
Hopefully that was the worst of it and your treatment works. It seems nitpicking bureaucrats are a problem the world over.
ReplyDeleteMark Cordone,
DeleteCheers! Hopefully my treatment will be successfully completed as soon as possible.
As to bureaucrats … well, I was one for a time, but I hope that I was a bit more flexible that the ones I came across yesterday.
All the best,
Bob
Completely sympathise Bob.
ReplyDeleteI had a similar issue with a hospital pharmacy over the doctor’s signature. In that case it was for a controlled drug (it was an opiate so I can understand the need for precision). Fortunately it was a small private hospital so it didn’t take long to correct. Parking was ‘free’ so no worries about delays, but then the real cost is much higher.
Today I needed to make a GP appointment, I really do need to see someone quickly, but was told there were only ‘emergency’ appointments available.
Receptionist:Is it an emergency?
Me: if it was I’d go to A&E. what counts as an emergency?
Receptionist: something like chest pains.
Me: but shouldn’t they be told to go to A&E or ring an ambulance?
Receptionist: but some people need to be told [the implication being ‘told by a doctor’]
Crazy! How does a non-medical person get to decide on the strength of a phone call what is a priority? Not their fault- the partners (doctors) run the practice and surely make the final decision to place receptionists in this position.
Nundanket,
DeleteCheers! I can understand why the pharmacist was being careful, but as the doctor’s name was at the top of the prescription form, it did seem a bit too ‘by the book’. At least you got your prescription sorted out quickly.
Our GP surgery seems to have used the COVID outbreak to introduce a system that makes it very difficult to get an appointment with one of the doctors. As a result, our local A&E Department is bursting at the seams treating people who could be dealt with by their GP.
An elderly neighbour fell over at a bus stop last week at 4.00pm. She suffered injuries to the right side of her face, and went straight to the A&E Department. (She decided that it was quicker to catch the bus than to wait for an ambulance.) She was triaged and eventually treated and allowed to go home twelve hours later at 4.00am the next morning! She told me that whilst she was there, there was a constant stream of people turning up with very minor medical problems that their GP could have dealt with, and that this slowed the treatment of minor injuries like hers.
All the best,
Bob
Dear Bob, you are doing the right thing confirming everything and all appointments etc. It’s almost that you need to be well when you are unwell if that makes sense in order to keep on top of everything otherwise things fall through the cracks in the system. What you described is what happens here in Australia as well.
ReplyDeleteStay strong.
Quinn
Glory to Ruritania (Quinn),
DeleteThe appointment I need to make is not in the random hope that I might need it; it is part of my ongoing treatment and there is very little leeway as to when it can take place. The problem is that the 'system' is designed to suit the GP surgery and not the needs of the patients it is supposed to serve.
Any system that expects you to book an appointment to see a doctor so far in advance that you have to be almost clairvoyant to know when you are going to be ill really isn't working!
All the best,
Bob
Sorry to hear about your trevails Bob, The NHS is great but at times the wholse system drives one mad. Our GP's has triaged for years now, so gnerally you can be seen on the day if required. The receptionists are pretty good at checking things to feed on up the chain. Sadly not all surgeries are like this, hence the overload on A&E, with our local hospital having the worse waiting times in the UK.
ReplyDeleteSteve J.,
DeleteCheers! I’m getting there … slowly!
The frontline NHS workers I have dealt with are superb, but the support staff are of a much more variable quality. My sister-in-law worked in a GP surgery before she retired and tells me that the way our GP surgery deals with patients would have been unacceptable where she worked.
Triaging patients makes great sense, and should mean that the GP’s resources are used effectively. It’s who does the triaging that I’m a bit wary of. A receptionist with no medical training isn’t the best person to do it, but that seems to be the case with my local surgery,
All the best,
Bob
The info taken by the receptionists is sent to a triage team for assessment, so you might be contacted by a nurse practioner or a doctor, depending upon how urgent they think your needs are. As an example, I was stung by a bee last year and my wrist and hand became infected. When I went to the surgery to get checked, after taken my details and saying someone would call me back, by the time I got home (5 minutes walk away) a doctor was already speaking to my wife in case it was sepsis!
DeleteSteve J.,
DeleteThat sounds like an excellent way to run a triage system at a GP surgery. Much better than trying to explain what is wrong to an untrained receptionist!
All the best,
Bob