Sign In / Register
Dr Peter Hall
Why are patients called patients? The root word has the meaning of undergo, suffer or bear. But what it makes me think of is waiting.
Patients do a lot of waiting. We even have special rooms for the purpose. I did propose that we redefine our waiting area as a “hospitality lounge”, but that didn’t fly! And then if you need public treatment you end up waiting again. So a big chunk of our work now is finding out where people are “on the list” and then pushing for an upgrade.
And I totally understand how frustrating this can be. Personally I don’t like waiting at all. I even got a bit ticked off when I phoned my own surgery and had to go through a couple of steps on the phone tree before a real person answered. But I can live with waiting if I know why I’m waiting, how long I’m going to have to wait for and whether anybody cares about it.
Which brings us back to the patient experience in general practice. In our customer surveys the commonest complaint is about waiting times and the commonest request is that they could have more time with the doctor. As you can see this can create a significant tension. While we try hard to run to time, when somebody walks in the door a GP really has no idea whether they are going to need two minutes or two hours. One develops some skills and strategies to manage this, but there are absolutely times when a good doctor has to put down their pen, push the tissue box toward the patient and accept that they will need his or her undivided attention for as long as it takes.
What should happen then is that the front desk staff and nurses step in to inform waiting patients of delays, offer them options and do their best to reschedule or find a workaround. Our experience is that most people tolerate a 10–15 minute delay, but after that they start to get restless and want to know what’s going on. I suggest that if the staff don’t realise, just have a little chat – there’s almost always something that can be done to meet your needs.
I do have to put in a word for the well-organised patient, especially those who tell us in advance if they are going to need extra time.
