8 Jan 2025
Why is My Doctor Late?
We all know the feeling right? You make an appointment for 10:00 and the doctor is running late already. It’s not nice and it is incredibly difficult to manage, especially in a small rural town where there is a responsibility to see Emergency Cases in the Hospital too.
But there are definitely things we can all do to help the situation, and our hope with this article, is that the more we all understand how the Doctors time is structured, we may all be able to do a couple of little things to help alleviate the pain for everyone.
A doctors day is split into a number of 15 Minute slots, these are known as Standard Appointments. A standard appointment is designed to try to maximise the number of people a Doctor can see in a day due to increasingly long wait lists in Australia. We ourselves tend to run at 2-3 week wait list. Yes it’s difficult to get a Doctors appointment in Australia.
A Standard 15 minute appoinment is designed to deal with 1 problem per patient per consult. this leaves the Doctor the time to address the problem, document the problem and provide an outcome to the problem. (Write a Script, Type up Referrel, Etc). It’s not a lot of time, but for most cases it is sufficient to comprehensively deal with a single problem.
Almost everybody I know uses the term “I’m Running 5 Minutes Late” and that on it’s own is normally not a big problem, but if we apply it to the schedule of a Doctor, then it is adds up pretty quickly. If every patient in the 1st hour of the day ran just 5 minutes late, that would mean a 20 minute wait for the 10am Patient, a 40 Minute wait for the 11am patient, and a 1 Hour wait for the 12:00 Patient. All this before lunch on a normal day when the hospital hasn’t called with an emergency? It adds up really quickly.
So what can we all do to alleviate the problem for everyone?
Have you booked the right appointment? If you have more than one problem to discuss with the Doctor, please book a longer appointment.
If you have multiple issues to discuss, prioritize them. Start with the most important ones to ensure they are addressed within the appointment time.
Am I a new patient? All New patients require a 30 minute appointment.
Know when your scripts are running out, and ask do I need to see to the doctor for this? Would a telephone consult work? We block out time to address Scripts and Results via telephone on Fridays.
Bring along any necessary documents, such as test results, medication lists, or referral letters. This saves time and helps the doctor quickly understand your situation.
In cases where it is unavoidable that the doctor is running late, due to emergency cases at the hospital, or other complex patient issues, we will always do our best to communicate that to you before your appointment time.
Nobody likes waiting for hours for an appointment, and together we can all make a small difference everyday by asking a few quick questions before we make the appointment.