"Ambulatory Care experience"

Doctor told me to have an iron infusion done due to my iron deficiency. I was sent to the Ambulatory Care Dept to get my infusion done. It was early in the morning and I just finished my night shift. The Ambulatory Care Dept was kind enough to accept me since I work in the same profession and luckily there was a spot for me that day.

Before the infusion can be started a Fluid Order Form needs to be charted. The ward clerk tried to page the clinician to chart the order however after 3hrs of waiting the clinician never returned the page. Note that from talking to other staff they've mentioned that this particular clinician is hard to reach and gets angry when being paged multiple times hence the staff are seemingly quite hesitant to page them again. But seriously a 3hrs wait and no return call back I feel is beyond ridiculous.

I was given options to resched but the next available slot was in 3wks which was too late; or wait for the clinician without assurance when they will respond back; and lastly to go the outpatient clinic myself and get any clinician to chart an order.

I was very disappointed because even if I was in my work uniform (post shift), I am the actual patient, yet it seemed I had to chase a clinician myself to get my own fluid order charted so I can get my iron infusion started! It wasn't the Ambulatory Dept ward clerk nor the nurses fault, but it is the clinician who never returned the page. That is 3 hours of waiting until I made the decision to find a clinician myself otherwise I will be stuck waiting. I just finished my night shift and have to go back again for another night shift, I didn't have time to wait around, I need to sleep! All in all it was 4hrs wait for a 15mins infusion.

The nurses were sympathetic and were sorry I had to wait for a long time. I do understand that there's a bit of a wait for staff since they are busy, but 3hrs of waiting and no return call back I found very disappointing. I would be more understanding if the clinician called back to say there's a delay but I felt no return call is disappointing. In my opinion, patients’ time are valuable as well, some don't have time to wait around.