re: How long will you wait on a Dr. before leaving?

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I walked out of a pediatric orthos office twice( Mr colorful socks in Baton Rouge). 2 hours the first time. I made sure the second l appt was the very first slot in the morning. After an 1.5 hours of waiting, hearing him in go in and out of other rooms and politely asking the nurse if they had forgot about us, I packed up, left and told the receptionist to not even think about charging me for a missed visit. I don’t know if it was the doctor, his staff or whatever but it was beyond frustrating. I’ve referred many other people away from his office who “heard good things about him” to spare them the frustration.

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I was late on occasion to scheduled clinic and there was nothing I could do about it. I always apologized and told patient I would give them the time they needed.

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An apology is nice. However, what we really need is to know if that emergency is going to be 2 hours or 20 minutes. The problem is that the offices never let you know. They just leave you hanging out in that waiting room with no info. that's not ok. Reschedule people if you're going to be gone 2 hours. Let them know they can leave and come back. Just don't leave me sitting.

40 years ago, I was told I had to get a physical for a job (a part time job as a bank proof operator...ridiculous!). I went to the appt that was made for me. I was taken to a room and told to put on the gown. I sat there (freezing!) for over an hour. My little 19 year old self said, "Hell no!" and left. I still got the job and no one ever mentioned it. I'm guessing the doc acted like he did my physical and charged the bank.

No way I ever wait for anyone for an hour. I'm asking questions after 30 min. I've always believe that my time is just as valuable as anyone else's!

You make a great point. Communication with the patient about any wait time is important. We failed at this on a number of occasions. Emergencies may take 30 mins or make take 2 hours. When you are in the middle of an emergency your thoughts are completely directed at dealing with the situation. It takes as long as it takes. Our PA was invaluable to be able to communicate this to patient's waiting in the office or waiting to be seen while hospitalized. It was crazy overall. While on call I would get up to 30 calls per day while doing procedures in the morning. Very disruptive. These (mostly necessary) calls were from either doctors or nurses on the hospital ward or from the ER or from my office or outside physicians. There was no one else to take the calls because my partners not on call were up to their necks in taking care of patient's as well. Don't even get me started on the nightmare of electronic health records with the wasted time on putting in data, erroneous and unimportant if not dangerous data put it by non medical people, wasted time on EHR when that time should have been spent on taking actual care of the patient including time to contemplate complicated situations. Damn, I'm glad I'm done. I miss taking care of patients but I do not miss all the other bullshite. At the back end of my career I was working 80 hour call weeks. Honestly, I was completely worn out by thursday of the week with several days still to go. Talk about having to be completely focused on the task at hand in order to prevent making mistakes when completely exhausted. It was much easier to handle this when I was in my 30s than when in my late 50's. I envied doctors that had a more relaxed schedule but some of us did not have that luxury.

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All he did was suck blood from my neck. Do not go see Dr. Acula

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Who downvotes Mitch Hedberg?!