Wellington Road Surgery

Wellington Road Surgery 2023-10-19 Person 2 5 0

This surgery has gone downhill very fast over the last year or so. I have been a patient for eight years and was very happy up until that time.. There seems to have been new staff taking over key roles and the management seems now to put the business interest of the practice above the interests of the patients. It is almost impossibly to see a doctor at all. If a doctor’s appointment is offered it is never with the same doctor twice. This leads to a lot of wasted time as the doctors are not familiar with the patient other than what is listed on their PC screen. It is not unusual to wait two hours plus for the phone to be answered when trying to get an appointment. Not everyone has smart phones or the ability to book online. There is a regular stream of text messages telling you the surgery will be closed for half days for training purposes, or that you are due jabs -despite having already responded and booked them. Results of blood tests and other hospital test results are often not passed to the patients. Doctors are changing prescriptions without any discussion with the patient and so on. Most of the individual staff members are polite and professional and treat the patients with respect but there are exceptions ( one particular receptionist comes to mind as being particularly rude and unhelpful). I understand that there are only two Doctors’ surgeries in the town which has a rapidly increasing population and stress levels may be increasing amongst the staff but that is an issue which should be addressed by management. The Practices should remember that patients are the customers not an inconvenience.

1. Stop making patients feel that they are an inconvenience. 2. Do something to shorten telephone waiting times. 3 . Do something to make more Doctor appointments available. 4. Be more proactive in getting results of tests to patients . As it is almost impossible to see a Doctor , either through being impossible to get through on the phone or there being no no-emergency appointments available the onus can no longer be left with the patient.