"Abuse, pain and manners"

I phoned my surgery 5 times recently, getting more upset, distressed, suffering from ever increasing pain with every call. 5 times they said they would phone me back. 5 times they did not bother.

I finally got through to someone different who was slightly more helpful, however in the background the staff were loudly proclaiming that another caller was a total cow.

Now this surgery has warnings about abusive behaviour on every wall, phone messages and online, but it’s ok for them to speak abusively about patients?

When I said to the person on the phone I could hear what they are all talking about in the background, they said they'd phone back. And they did 5 minutes later, and there was zero noise in the background. So they either left the room and phoned from elsewhere or let their cohorts know they’d been heard.

With a culture like that, it’s no surprise that patients get distressed. 

The Doctor I eventually got put through in the morning then forgot to write my prescription. So I was left in agony for 6+hrs waiting for a prescription that was never written (they told me just past 9am that I’d have to wait til 4pm for the prescription). So I had to send my carer to the original pharmacy it should have went to and then to another pharmacy further from home. 

How ineffective, incompetent, rude and degrading does staff behaviour have to get before lessons are learned? Does a patient have to die or a surgery get sued before changes are implemented?

I’ve noticed the standards slip since Covid, the hostile attitudes and using any excuse to remove patients from that particular surgery. I stupidly thought that the community anger was an NHS funding issue, but I don't think this is to do with money, I think this is to do with cultures in the Scottish NHS, and I feel it’s only worsening.