[Zoggite]

Let's see YOUR face when your elderly mother's script has been screwed up(once again...) by the surgery on a friday afternoon before a Bank Holiday and she's running out of insulin and the Pharmacist tells you to sort it out yourself with the Doctors!
This is the Real world, my patients are real, with real health problems and really sloppy surgeries; My staff and I do a lot of 'phoning around and badgering (within reason), but come Christmas we are left in no doubt that this is much appreciated by our patients, and I wouldn,t have it any other way.
As for queues and waiting times, I have trained my staff in the "two minutes per item" rule: if someone comes in with scripts for 12 items, they are told it will take 24 minutes, and that they can either take a seat and wait, or call back later. I have never had a negative response to this, apart from the Area Manager, who seems to think that this is not a "customer-focussed attitude to service (quote)"... he obviously would like me to stick a broom up my A*** and sweep the floor as well as everything else.
Whilst I admit that it is very hard not to reply to rudeness with rudeness, I have also come to the realisation that it is impossible to please all the people all the time, and some people are impossible to please anytime, you just can't win with them, so just fight the battles you can win, do your best to treat people like you would want to be treated, and you will go home in the evening with a clear conscience.
I too used to have lots of parients who rang up saying I'd forgotten to give them their atorvastatin etc...; but ever since the surgeries started printing on repeat slips "last issued on the../.../2006" next to each item, I can now prove to the patients that the sloppiness is on their surgery's side, not ours. This has helped us enormously, but the GPs must be cursing us!