Late or missed appointments

[chillchick]

I work on a community based research project and the majority of my job involves visiting clients in their homes. However, since it's research, scheduling is a bit more difficult thanut would otherwise be - that is, some weeks i have to run around like a crazy person and other weeks I have very little to do.

Anyway- about a month ago two clients complained about me. In one case I rescheduled an appt last minute because I had double booked myself- something that occasionally happens during busy weeks - and he was upset about it. In another case I did not show up for an appt- this has NEVER happened before and I am shocked/mortified that I messed up so badly, but what happened is the appt didn't save in our database and since I don't commit appts to memory (as that would be nearly impossible) I missed it. I was extremely busy and thus that added to the problem, but luckily my supervisor was understanding and knew how busy things had been.

After that I met with my supervisor to develop an action plan and all was well.

Until yesterday when my car wouldn't start AND my cell was dead. Can you believe my luck? Ugh. But I have an old car and the reality is that sometimes it is unreliable. Anyway I was lucky to use a woman's phone to get help, and eventually charged my phone and called my client. I ended up meeting with the client about 90 minutes late, and didn't call her until about an hour after our appt was set to begin.

Now, I am terrified that she is going to call my boss and I'm going to lose my job. I am nauseous and didn't sleep at all last night. I called the client today to apologize again but had to leave a voicemail. I am hoping and praying that she will not complain but I am fairly sure she will.

What do I do? I feel like I'm just waiting for the other shoe to drop and waiting to be fired.

[Misstia]

So stressful. I would try to contact the client again to see if the massage you left was heard. I would explain about the car and the phone and let them know how busy it is and explain that there is no excuse but some of the stresses with this type of job. I also would have given my supervisor a call when it happened, just so they had a heads up. I hope that this would not be a cause of termination, life does happen and I'm sure you are not the first to have a bad week or month......good luck.

[KelRN215, BSN, RN]

Always notify the client and the agency if you are running late. How do you schedule your visits? I give patients a range of time as to when I will be there, as I never know what kind of traffic I will encounter or if I will get held up at a previous patient.

[BabaLouRN]

How do you give your patients a range of time? I work about a 30 mile range. A lot of days I have times all set up to coordinate with the least driving time. (0% of my route is under construction and traffic is a NIGHTMARE) THEN, toward the end of my list, there's that one patient that HAS to be seen at a certain time and not willing to change. I then end up from that point on, my day is all messed up and no one is happy. The missed visit only adds to my list for the next day.

[KelRN215, BSN, RN]

How do you give your patients a range of time? I work about a 30 mile range. A lot of days I have times all set up to coordinate with the least driving time. (0% of my route is under construction and traffic is a NIGHTMARE) THEN, toward the end of my list, there's that one patient that HAS to be seen at a certain time and not willing to change. I then end up from that point on, my day is all messed up and no one is happy. The missed visit only adds to my list for the next day.

Don't give them that much of a choice. You've already arranged your day and that is the only time you have left.

I tell my patients "I will be there between 10-11" if that's the time. I generally know how long it takes me to get from one patient to the next- all my patients are in the city or the immediate suburbs so I rarely drive more than 5-10 miles between patients but with traffic and weather, 5-10 miles can sometimes take an hour.