Communication with our assistants

Dear patients,

We would like to ask you for your attention for the following: Unfortunately our assistents sometimes get treated with disrespect by patients, when they call our medical centre. The flow of medical questions to our centre grows and becomes complexer every day, and our assistants are doing everything they can to help you. On the instructions of our GP's they do an extensive triage to find out the urgency of the matter. There are hundreds of calls to our centre every day, each taking up attention and time. This unfortunately means some patients will have to wait longer before their call is answered by the assistant. We understand that this is unpleasant, however it does not help our assistants if patients express their discomfort to them in an unpleasant manner. 

We as GP's find it unacceptable that our assistants have to deal with disrespectful communication. In case this happens, the GP will contact the involved people to have them explain their actions. 

We are happy that the majority of our patients is very kind and understanding, and we would like to thank you very much for that. Even though there are staff shortages in health care, we try to keep our medical centre running every day. We are very happy with our new desk clerk, who will start per June 1st. She will be able to help our assistants with the workload, so that we have more time to help all our patients.

Thank you for your understanding.

Sincerely, your GP's M. Makkink, M. Geenen, L. Yntema, R. Siccama and C. Dirkzwager