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Picked up my personal scripts from the surgery and took them into adjacent lds. One look at the queue and I said will be at least half hour, I will have a snooze.
The assistant said oh probably only 10-20mins, but I made myself comfortable and soon drifted off. (very tiring being retired).
I was awoken by a woman complaining that she had been told 10 mins and had already waited 20mins. assistant tried to pacify her by saying they were very busy, but this only fuelled the fire. Pt flared up and said if she had been told at start was a longer wait, would have gone elswhere. Script then produced to be taken somewhere else, but NHS refund due. Even to me this seemed to take a long time, and pt getting crosser. She wanted her receipt back to check that not taken off her account, and at this point my own scripts became available, so I left them to it.
I have suffered from assistants saying 'would you like to wait' when had a pile of waiters already and I know they are trained to say 10 mins.
I always say multiply items by three minutes and say others are waiting so could be longer, but have frequently faced 10 or more multi item scripts all promised within 10 mins.
elsewhere others have noted that waiting time important to PCTs, and PCS was brought in to try to reduce the volume of waiters. Main bottleneck when I work at that branch is the single terminal not networked to the idle terminal in the consulting room. If this was networked, at least the PCS could be done in peace.
Do others have this problem of staff giving unrealistic waiting times?
johnep
The assistant said oh probably only 10-20mins, but I made myself comfortable and soon drifted off. (very tiring being retired).
I was awoken by a woman complaining that she had been told 10 mins and had already waited 20mins. assistant tried to pacify her by saying they were very busy, but this only fuelled the fire. Pt flared up and said if she had been told at start was a longer wait, would have gone elswhere. Script then produced to be taken somewhere else, but NHS refund due. Even to me this seemed to take a long time, and pt getting crosser. She wanted her receipt back to check that not taken off her account, and at this point my own scripts became available, so I left them to it.
I have suffered from assistants saying 'would you like to wait' when had a pile of waiters already and I know they are trained to say 10 mins.
I always say multiply items by three minutes and say others are waiting so could be longer, but have frequently faced 10 or more multi item scripts all promised within 10 mins.
elsewhere others have noted that waiting time important to PCTs, and PCS was brought in to try to reduce the volume of waiters. Main bottleneck when I work at that branch is the single terminal not networked to the idle terminal in the consulting room. If this was networked, at least the PCS could be done in peace.
Do others have this problem of staff giving unrealistic waiting times?
johnep
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