Letter I will not send to my pediatrician's office:…read more
Kind Sirs & Madams,
I would like to start by saying that we love your pediatricians & nurses--they have taken great care of us when my children have caught every bug, fallen numerous times, had stitches replaced the day after they were removed, or had questions regarding what to do about the Princeton University meningitis outbreak.
That said, sometimes the desk staff needs better bedside manners.
If you tell me to wait 20 minutes, and it's 45 minutes later with no ETA, I may be irritated not because I have 2 small children, but because you have made me wait longer and longer. I honestly don't care that you raised 4 children and have assured me that "I'll get through it" like you did, as I'm actually enjoying watching my own children grow and don't need to get through it like they're dirty dishes or laundry, but here's the point--YOU have made me wait, gave me an inaccurate amount of time to wait, then decided that I must have brats I have "to deal with" that are irritating me, not that you have, again, misinformed me while I'm still waiting.
On that note, if I said I called yesterday and the nurse told us to stop in if the diarrhea persisted, please don't ask me THREE times whether I have an appointment. I was told to stop in if the poop was mucousy, which it is. Again, no, I don't have an appointment and will be happy to make an appointment even though that is not what the nurse told us to do yesterday. I now understand that the nurse should have given us an appointment instead of telling us to stop in first thing in the morning, thanks for repeating that over and over again because I must be deaf and dumb.
To add insult to injury, if you tell me that you're going to tell the assistant that I am in the waiting room with my sick child and might get in sooner, please actually do that. When I ask, 45 minutes later and 15 minutes after my official appointment time I was blessed to get this morning, please try to be a little discreet when you finally call to find out that the normal assistant is not in and the current assistant had no idea I had already been there for 45 minutes because, well, you never called the assistant in the first place, now did you? Yes, I could hear both sides of the conversation, which made it more than obvious that it is standard practice in this office to have patients waiting well past their scheduled appointment time.
One more thing--you told me another 10 minutes. So I went for a walk around the mall. I was back in under 7 minutes. Then you scolded me because, apparently, the assistant called my name sometime while I was out for a walk. Again, I followed your time estimate, which happened to be wrong, yet I'm the one at fault?
I do understand that doctors are busy people. So are the rest of us. I actually had to call someone today to pick up my daughter from school because I would have been 15 minutes late. If I'm late 15 minutes at your office, I'm scolded and told that my appointment may be cancelled before receiving a letter that not only might it be cancelled, but I could be charged for the late appointment. I can try to call to say I'm going to be late, but then I'm on hold for 45 minutes, so it's actually faster for me to walk to your office carrying my child while on hold to let you know I will be a few minutes late. That said, I have never actually seen a doctor within 15 minutes of my appointment time, even when it's the first appointment of the day and the waiting room is empty.
Kind regards,
Your losing patience patients
