"Ridiculous wait times at Ipswich hospital antenatal clinic..."

I have had four appointments at the Ipswich hospital antenatal clinic and not once have I been seen anywhere near my appointment time. On one occasion I had to reschedule my appointment after waiting for over an hour and needing to be somewhere else.

I had an 8: 45am appointment (as I did for my last appointment) and I wasn't seen for almost an hour. Indeed nobody in the waiting room was called until well after 9am. I heard from the receptionist that staff were running behind. How on earth can there already be a backlog at 9am in the morning! ! ! !

What made it worse was that by the time I was finally called I really needed to use the bathroom. I couldn't go before in case my name was called and I missed it. When I asked the doctor if I could go before the appointment she didn't seem very happy about it. Obviously, it seems to me that she has never been seven months pregnant and trying to hold her bladder for an extended time frame... not to mention feeling light-headed after sitting for an hour in a small, increasingly crowded waiting room with poor air circulation.

She didn't even apologise for the long wait which I would think is common courtesy.

Surely this facility can be made to run with some level of efficiency! It's as if this painfully slow moving clinic thinks that pregnant women have nothing better to do with a whole morning than hang around in their waiting room.

It is totally unacceptable really.