r/NHSfailures

I’m a medical receptionist working under NHS England at a GP Practice. Ask me anything!
Please note my responses will be based on NHS England policies and even this may differ due to local ICB’s.
Additionally, I am also a single individual therefore I do not represent my employer or the wider NHS. I am simply looking to see if I can help people understand the role of medical receptionists/administrators better.
EDIT: I’m also a prescription clerk.

This might get a bit long so grab a coffee and sit back.

On Monday afternoon I attended my local hospital for a cystoscopy for urine retention (was holding back about a pint of urine). After the procedure I was handed a piece of paper and told to give it to the reception staff by the door.

All good so far yeah? No, you see I'm new to all this and wasn't informed that I should empty my bladder before I left, no one told me anything apart from you'll get an appointment letter in the post. So yeah, stupid me went home and started chugging tons of water to flush out my bladder.

Now here's where the problem starts. I'm pumping tons of water in to me but nothings coming out. My bladder is being stretched like an over filled water balloon and nothings coming out, and to make things even worse because the anesthetic is still inside, it's not sending any signals to my brain that I really should be using the toilet.

Now I only new this was genuinely an emergency when my friend rang me about 5pm to see how the procedure had gone. When I told them they said I should get myself straight to A and E to get it sorted. So that's exactly what I did and 8 hours later I was sent on my way with an emergency catheter, some night time bags and I was told that the twoc team and a district nurse would be out to visit me soon.

I waiting right up to Thursday and hadn't heard anything from the district nurse, the twoc team or my GP surgery. So I rang my surgery to see if the A and E discharge notes had been sent through. If you guessed that I'm going to say nope they didn't get them, you'd be correct. Brilliant, okay let's ring the district nursing team directly to see if they've got the notes, nope nothing. Excellent... A and E haven't pushed the handover off or whatever the terminology is. Time to contact PALS to see if they can do anything about this.

PALS is useless if you need something doing in less than a week, ten days is there usual timescale. More beurocratic red tape, fine I'll ring my surgery ask to speak to the practice manager and see if anything can be done that way. I ring my surgery, they put me through to a practice manager (or on duty doctor, they didn't say which) and I explain my situation to them, I inform them that I'm having issues with my bag (it's a long tube bag and is getting kinked, blocked, valve damage from all the bending by the neck of the bag etc). My surgery says they'll look in to it and I get a call from the district nurse about 2 hours later. They're going to send someone round Thursday night to sort it all out. Fantastic, we've finally got things sorted.

Wrong again. I wait up till about 3am and no one shows. I stay in all Friday and no one shows, Saturday (yesterday) no one shows. Today is Sunday (I've looked at my little notes on the NHS app and there's an entry in there in that should be flashing on the district nurses system, a referral from my GP stating that this was an urgent issue and a home visit is needed. But yet not one single person has done anything about it.

So this is where we stand. It's currently almost 7am on Sunday, I've got one night time bag left, I've some how managed to muddle through clearing a blocked valve and vaccuum sealed bag and found a way to stop this long strap banging on my leg and tugging on the end of my... ahem.. yeah that dangly thing us men have that sometimes gets in the way when we don't want it too lol.

Has the NHS literally just washed it's hands of me, am I being impatient with all this or should I be sending complaints as far up the senior management chain as I can?

we're going to give you a surgery on an unspecified date but dont worry your on the short list this was just to confirm everything you already told us because why would you be correct about your own body. Thanks for filling out the form now im going to ask you all the questions again

For context I am female

Edit 2 - thanks for all of your comments. It has really changed my perception and I realise that this was not acceptable. I would like to just forget about it and move on but I would absolutely hate for someone else to feel like this. So I will make a complaint.

Edit - just wanted to add I’m not accusing the dr of deliberately doing anything bad. I just feel like the whole appt may have been handled badly?

I’ve had an issue ongoing for a couple of years that I haven’t seen a dr about. Last week I sucked up courage and contacted my surgery as it got worse out of nowhere. I had a phone call with a clinician who was lovely, he listened to my anxieties around the exam and my symptoms/ issues. It’s on my notes re anxiety around rectal exam. I had my appt today with female GP.

As soon as I walk in she’s staring at me, I thought I was in the wrong room! She didn’t say hello, take a seat, it was just so awkward. She asked my name and said “you have anal fissure and want examination?” To which I replied yes. She gave me very vague instructions, and then carried out the rectal exam. Half way through I have an inner panic thinking oh no what if she tries to go inside? So I say I don’t want internal exam. She poked and prodded a bit to check for pain and moved the “area” around to visualise. After, she says she can’t see anything as I was too tense and it’s probably piles, but luckily ( and unfortunately, Was very undignified!) I took photos last week, and I showed her. She said yes from photos she can see multiple fissures/tears higher up. She said I will give you GTN cream, but I said I’m concerned this may cause me bad symptoms due to my medical history, and if I can have the second line treatment cream. She said confirm with your consultant and we will give you GTN.

As soon as I left I was holding back tears and went home and cried so much. But I didn’t know *why*. But thinking about it -

I was not offered a chaperone. Chaperone wasn’t even discussed. The procedure was not explained to me whatsoever and it was based on “rectal exam”. That’s the only info I had. I’ve never had one I don’t know what that would entail apart from someone looking at my butt? And that I had to guess half way through what she might or might not do. I was sat down for 15 seconds before I was told to go to the bed and instructed to remove clothes and lay down. No questions, discussion of symptoms, questions about my bleeding. But she wrote down “small amount of bleeding when passing stool” on notes. Yet I’ve had large amounts in the past. Very minimal discussion after.

I was a victim of rape a few months ago. This is also on my recent notes. I also have ADHD, on my notes. I just assumed a bit more care would be taken.

Not holding too much against it but everything I’ve read about my specific symptoms (multiple fissures and how pain presents) NHS says that this is red flag and needs IBD queried.

I just feel so so rubbish after this morning. I don’t know what to do or if it’s because I’m sensitive. I’m not going to take offence if you think the issue is my sensitivity, rather than anything the doctor did wrong.