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My RT clinic chronically late with appointments—your experience?
I worked in a commercial lab for part of my career, so I understand how technical difficulties can cause delays. I expect some of that with any instrument or machine. And I understand that some radiation treatments are more difficult than others and that can cause delays. But my RT clinic is chronically behind schedule, anywhere from 10-40 minutes. The RT folks running the machine are good, technically competent people, and I empathize with them when them are running behind (I can tell it stresses them out), but man this is a real stressor for me too when I am trying to hold my bladder and keep my bowels from acting up, not knowing how soon I will be called.
My appointment time has been at 11:30 am, but today I switched to 10:30 am because they had a “difficult case” starting today and it helped them out if I came an hour earlier. I thought that maybe coming earlier in the day would reduce the probability of them running late. Well 10:30 came, and I had a very full bladder, with three guys waiting in front of me. Bad sign. At 10:35, a tech came in and said they were running at least 30 minutes late. I told her I couldn’t wait that long and was going to pee and go home, which I did. She apologized, and told me they were going to skip their lunch break today to try to catch up. Again, I felt bad for her, but also my working experience in a lab also taught me that when instrument techs are under pressure to get work done, mistakes are much more likely to occur. I do not want to be the recipient of any such mistake during my therapy.
My sense of the situation is that the facility books too many back-to-back appointments. When something goes off the rails, there is no wiggle room in the schedule for catching up. I have set a limit of waiting 30 minutes beyond my appointment time before calling it off—if I can last that long. This really distressed me today because skipping days (even though they are added to the backend of my treatment plan) can compromise the effectiveness of the RT, according to my RO.
What is/was your experience with this issue? Is this a common problem, or something specific to my clinic?
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Thanks for the heads-up. I'm about to pull the trigger on RT and I had not considered what you and others have described. I will definitely ask about their procedures for late appointments when I go to set up my schedule.
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1 Reaction@quaddick Glad that my experience may help you avoid
"late appointment anxiety”. The shared experiences in this group are so valuable and have helped me on many fronts.
As a footnote: the rest of this week has gone much better—right on schedule. The head radiation therapists apologized for the screw up this week, quite aware that I had changed my appointment to help them out. I think they are making every effort to keep me on schedule now.
Best wishes for your RT!
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1 ReactionI completed 28 sessions of IMRT last Wednesday, my appointment time was 10:45 AM, I arrived every day about 5 to 10 minutes early and every time they took me in early, they we’re always 5 minutes ahead of schedule, which I greatly appreciated. However, glad it’s over, the daily bladder fill was getting old.
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1 ReactionWhen I got my first round of radiation, to my middle spine, I was probably the person causing those delays. I'm not a small guy, even after I'd lost 40 lb with post-surgical complications, and I couldn't move anything blow my ribs at the time.
A porter would wheel me downstairs from the cancer ward to radiology, then I'd wait until a technician came out and wheeled me into the room. They'd realise immediately that it wasn't going to be easy getting me off the stretcher onto the table, so they'd end up calling in the techs from all the other radiation rooms to do a sheet transfer, interrupting their work. I'm sure it had a cascading effect through the rest of the afternoon. The same thing could happen if there were a patient with dementia who needed to be calmed, someone with frail bones, someone hooked up to a pacemaker or other medical device, and so on.
When I did my second round of radiation to my prostate itself 6 months later, as an outpatient who could (by then) transfer from wheelchair to table with just the tech holding my elbow for balance, what amazed me was that they weren't running behind schedule MORE often.
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1 Reaction@northoftheborder I’m generally an easy in-and-out in 15 minute case. I fully expect that cases like yours are just part of the daily mix. In fact, I changed my appointment time so that they could better accommodate someone that was going to require 1.5 hours for their treatment. A skilled scheduler should know how to make this work smoothly without major delays, so that everyone, with different needs, gets treated on time. and gets whatever assistance they need. Sounds like your team handled things pretty well. Glad to hear that! I’ve got respect for the techs and radiation therapists who are in the trenches every day doing their best to meet all the challenges.
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1 Reaction@johnernest Congrats, and glad to hear it went pretty smoothly!!! The full bladder-empty rectum grind does get old.
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