Behaviour in the Doctor's Waiting Room

MayBee70

I was in the doctors waiting room today chatting to someone about hospital waiting lists and her husband said ‘ of course, if you get a dinghy and come here by boat you”ll be operated on straight away’. This just seems to be a common perception and I bet he is a Reform voter. I didn’t respond to his comment but I felt very uncomfortable.

I would too, unfortunately I’ve heard this comment recently , mostly from older men. I reply ‘and where did you get those facts from ?’
I have many friends working in the NHS and immigrants certainly don’t jump the queue .

It always catches me unawares even though it has happened so often. I was having such a nice informative conversation with them, too. Mind you they were upset that they’d had to sell a lot of things to finance her knee operation because she didn’t want to wait 2 years ( I hadn’t realised the waiting list was so long) and believed all the rhetoric about migrants being to blame for everything. I was chatting to an old guy at Beamish a few years ago; he’d had health problems and had been hospitalised and I felt sorry for him, but out of the blue he started ranting on about foreigners. That time I just walked away.

I’d had a run of scam phone calls so when I received a call from an unknown number and a woman with an Indian accent asked if I was Mrs…. I snapped ‘whatever you’re pretending to be I know you are a scam’ and was just about to slam the phone down when she said ‘it’s doctor …. here from the surgery. I was so embarrassed and apologised profusely.

My Planned Care Website (which is updated regularly) provides hospital-specific waiting times for different treatments, including orthopaedic surgery.
You can search by postcode and speciality.
Mine is 6 weeks for my nearest hospital (for an orthopaedic appointment) and 9 weeks for treatment.

Average wait for knee operations according to government questions- 24 February 2025

There are currently 49,509 patients waiting for a knee replacement. The mean average National Health Service waiting time for this procedure is 28.7 weeks.

The Elective Reform Plan, launched as part of the Government’s Plan for Change, sets out how we will get back to the NHS constitutional standard that 92% of patients wait no longer than 18 weeks from Referral to Treatment by the end of this Parliament

We have set an ambition for 2025/26 that we reach 65% of patients waiting no longer than 18 weeks nationally, and for all trusts to deliver a minimum 5% improvement by March 2026.

The Elective Reform Plan has committed to providing quicker access for patients to common surgical procedures by opening 17 new and expanded surgical hubs by June 2025, so more operations can be carried out. Dedicated and protected surgical hubs are transforming the way the NHS provides elective care by focusing on high volume low complexity surgeries.

There are currently 113 elective surgical hubs that are operational across England as of February 2025. These surgical hubs help separate elective care facilities from urgent and emergency care, improving outcomes for patients and reducing pressures on hospitals.

I am surprised anyone needs to wait 2 years.

Just to stick my two-penneth in. The waiting room at my Doctor's surgery was generally a chatty space, whilst we're all waiting to see the ethereal, elusive U\nic\orns, oh sorry Doctor's!
The only issue that causes so much upset lately is how rude the ruddy, awful receptionist's have suddenly become.
They are nasty & downright malicious! It never used to be like this! I think I'm going to make a complaint after seeing a little old lady being berated viciously for putting her foot a couple of inches over the vague battle-line that exists to keep us plebs at bay!
How times have changed!

I’ve just checked and it says the waiting time for a TKR at my local hospital is 78 weeks. I know my ex husband paid for his partner to have a TKR as she was fed up of waiting. I think the problem is not being able to plan your life when you’re on a waiting list. I think if you’re prepared to go to another hospital you can get in sooner but then you have to arrange transport and I assume you have to travel to the same hospital for physio. You can however have it done privately through the hospital.

Oh goodness me MayBee70!
😱
Could you look at the next nearest and see if they are similar?

It's obviously cheaper to go an extra (say) 20 miles than pay privately...

And no, you can have physio at your local hospital (or even yet another). I am having physio at my local one (about 1 -2 miles away) rather than travel 34 miles to where I chose to have my hip replaced recently. They asked me in the recovery ward where I wanted to go but the assumption was my most local.

Anyway I think it's worth knowing about local-ish differences so we can choose what works best for us.

MayBee70

I’ve just checked and it says the waiting time for a TKR at my local hospital is 78 weeks. I know my ex husband paid for his partner to have a TKR as she was fed up of waiting. I think the problem is not being able to plan your life when you’re on a waiting list. I think if you’re prepared to go to another hospital you can get in sooner but then you have to arrange transport and I assume you have to travel to the same hospital for physio. You can however have it done privately through the hospital.

All in all, from being told I needed one to actually having the operation, was nearly five years.
They "forgot" to put people on the waiting list here, i thought it was just me but apparently not.

Rosie, if a poster's interest is academic so be it. If her interest is personal and anecdotal so ne it. Read a post and reply to in any way you like
Too kind.
Now why didn’t I think of that?

I think people DID reply to you OP, and it seemed the general consensus was that your son saved you from considerable embarrassment to him and to yourself by what could have easily been construed as a highly audible racist remark , then you started on about sociological and historical - changing the subject perhaps?
When in a hole…….

Tenko

MayBee70

I was in the doctors waiting room today chatting to someone about hospital waiting lists and her husband said ‘ of course, if you get a dinghy and come here by boat you”ll be operated on straight away’. This just seems to be a common perception and I bet he is a Reform voter. I didn’t respond to his comment but I felt very uncomfortable.

I would too, unfortunately I’ve heard this comment recently , mostly from older men. I reply ‘and where did you get those facts from ?’
I have many friends working in the NHS and immigrants certainly don’t jump the queue .

The man was specifically talking about boat immigrants.

I dont know if the comment is true or not.

I must point out that, if I’d overheard the comment made by the OP I wouldn’t have regarded that as racist, being hard of hearing myself and struggling with some accents, especially on the phone.

My own hearing is not as good as it was and I find some accents hard to follow, particularly strong Glaswegian. Other British accents can be difficult. By the way, you can't always tell a person's ethnic origin from a surname - we have a Polish lady GP with a British surname, from marriage presumably.

vintage1950

My own hearing is not as good as it was and I find some accents hard to follow, particularly strong Glaswegian. Other British accents can be difficult. By the way, you can't always tell a person's ethnic origin from a surname - we have a Polish lady GP with a British surname, from marriage presumably.

That's right . The doctor with the foreign surname spoke English like a native. I suppose her married name may have been German.