St Andrews Medical Practice 2016-05-27 Person 2 5 0

I recently moved the area and needed to register with the practice. The website states that to avoid busy periods, patients should come in to register between either 11.00 am -12.30 pm or 5.00pm - 6.00pm. I work full-time and quite far from the surgery - I am therefore unable to get there within the allocated registration times without taking time off work. I was hopeful that surgery staff might understand this so I popped in one morning at 9.30am to ask if someone would accept my completed registration forms. I was told no, repeatedly, despite the fact that the waiting area was completely empty at this point. No attention was paid to the fact that I couldn’t get to the surgery during registration hours – this was clearly seen as my problem to sort out. While I understand that it’s important to make sure that reception staff have time to attend to patients, phone calls etc, surely there should be a little leeway for patients who are in full-time work and need to register? I am fully prepared to take time off work for medical appointments but to expect people to do this just so that they can hand in some forms seems a bit excessive.