From the 1st August, when booking an appointment patients will be asked if they would prefer a face to face or a telephone appointment.
For a face to face appointment you would be expected to arrive at your appointment time, for a telephone consultation the doctor will try and call you half an hour either side of your appointment time. Please try to remember that your appointment is for 15 minutes only, if you take longer than this, the people waiting for their appointments or calls are delayed.
The booking slots that show on online booking will be called ‘patient choice’ please remember to add whether you want a face to face or a telephone call in the reason box. We are still working with our text message supplier to work out a better way of offering this choice to patients booking on line.
This is an ongoing trial, while the practice attempts to find a more acceptable way of working, some patients love telephone consultations and some patients don’t. We will continue to work as hard as we can to find the right balance.
Please be aware this will not create many more appointments than we are currently offering, the practice is offering more appointments than we were pre covid. Demand is at an all-time high and we are working as hard as we can. This is a national problem and not limited to your practice. Please be kind to our staff. The instances of abuse and bad behaviour by a minority of patients is escalating and it will not be tolerated. I would also like to remind our patients that all the calls are now recorded and for the well being of our staff they are encouraged to report rude or aggressive or threatening calls, the calls will be listened to and action taken if it is established that a patient has treated our staff badly. Staff in tears is a daily occurrence, this is not right, they are trying to help you. Any patients breaking the zero tolerance policy at the practice will be removed from our patient list.
Any negative comments added to this post will be deleted. Personal insults and unsubstantiated claims on the community pages will also be treated as abuse of our staff. Please remember there is always two sides to every story, unfortunately confidentiality laws forbids us from the right to reply.
On a final and more positive note I would like to thank the patients who have witnessed the abuse in the waiting room and taken the time to check the staff member was ok, or brought them gifts to make up for the treatment they have received from the minority, or spoken up in defence of the practice or the staff member, these acts of kindness raise the moral of the staff and help us to remember why we are here and that our hard work is appreciated by some who realise the pressures we are facing.