“I need a call back for my next GP appointment the day before”
– by Carol Ovenstone
Hi there. It’s Carol. I haven’t been on the airwaves for quite a while and I thought I should start reporting again.
I’ve been having a bit of a bad day week. Today, basically, I’d been at my doctors a couple of months ago and asked the receptionist if the doctor’s surgery was Dementia Friendly. She didn’t know what I was talking about. There was no-one else in the surgery waiting to be seen, so I explained that I have dementia and that’s why I was asking. I would never say it if there were people behind me waiting for appointments because there’s no confidentiality at the desk.
I said, the reason why I was asking was because I need a call back for my next appointment the day before. She said, “okay – we’ll do that for you. We don’t do it, but there’s another person in the next room who makes the appointments and I tell her that I do know a few people who’ve asked for a call back, but I don’t know the reasons why.
Well, it ended in a bit of overkill. She contacted me, called back for me. My daughter got it as well. I live in sheltered housing and the manger got it as well. The social worker got it as well! You’ve got a doctors appointment they all said. I said – “I know, I know!” So a bit of overkill, but at least it was done..
Today I called and it was one of the older receptionists and I said please can I get a call back. She said, “we don’t do that.” I said “What!?” She said, “we don’t do that here.”
“Are you Dementia Friendly?” I said.
“I don’t know what you mean” [she said]. So, I told her briefly about it and I said I did get a call back a few weeks ago. She said, “well, I don’t know how they did it because there’s not a button on the computer to actually say that we can actually do that.”
I said, how about not using the computer, “can you not manually phone someone? She said – we don’t do that!? I said, “well you should be doing that – you can’t just sit there and say we don’t do that and act like it’s done. It was done at the surgery a few weeks ago.”
That’ll be one of the newer receptionists and i’m one of the older ones and we don’t usually do that [she said]
So I said, “yes you do, so I think you need to get together with the other receptionists, in fact, who’s your manger i’ll speak to him.” I think I actually know him so, I’m gong to phone him later on.
It’s really disappointing that you’re own GP surgery either does or doesn’t call people depending on the receptionist. That’s just ridiculous in this day and age.
In fact, I phoned my dentist and they said straight away, yes of course we’ll call back. Phoned my opticians – they’re very dementia friendly and they said no problem. They’ll be certain to call me back.
That’s two people who are dementia friendly and are very nice about it all.
And your own GP surgery just don’t do it apparently. “There’s not a button on the computer for that! It’s just ridiculous.”
So, anyway, that made me a bit down.
