I mentioned in my "boring town" post how impressed I was that I had only a two minute wait for an X-ray at my hospital walk-in clinic. Fantastic. Now comes the problem - finding out what it showed and getting treatment started if appropriate. I rang the surgery yesterday, a week after the X-ray as recommended, to get a follow up appointment (preferably face-to-face) with the same Doctor. No appointments available with ANY Doctor. Try tomorrow.
This is tomorrow and I have just tried. No appointments available with ANY Doctor. Try Monday. This is for the non-urgent appointments, with a waiting time of about three weeks.
I rang at 11.30, after the scramble for urgent appontments had finished. In the preamble before the multiple choice menu it was said that "as of 08.11 this morning ALL urgent appointment slots" for the day had been filled. Gone in eleven minutes!
They also said on both occasions that they had a shortage of Doctors because of sickness. The poor Doctors are probably still trying to get an appointment for their own illnesses.
I remember, as many on here will, when you only phoned for an appointment if you were too sick to leave your house, (when a home visit would be arranged), otherwise you trundled off to the Surgery, sometimes in the Doctor's own house, and waited for half an hour for the receptionist or Doctor to call "Next Patient Please". It seemed to work so well.
It’s been a while so I will start us off…….whats for supper and why?


