Minor vent: pediatricians, pediatric dentists, etc., who don't have after-school apppointment times

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A lot of pediatricians have Saturday hours - we schedule all our well-child check-ups on Saturdays.

For other appts, I try to schedule it for my alternating Friday off, but both my kids have specialists who only work on Wednesdays for some odd reason. Thankfully, those appts are only once a quarter, but it would be easier to manage of course if they could offer Friday hours.

That may be their clinical hours and the rest of the days of the week they are engaged in hospital work, surgery, or research.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Op, I agree with you! Especially orthodontists who need to see kids regularly. I had to make an appt for my kid this past spring. The receptionist only gave me times smack in the middle of the day, when I told her that wouldn't work, her response was "oh, it will only take 5 minutes. " my response to that was "yeah, for you, but it will take me a half an hour to get from work to dd's school, 10 minutes to sign her out, 10 to get to your office and when the appt is done, 40 minutes to get back to work. We ended up only finding a time weeks later. Frustrating.

In your example, it's not that the orthodontist doesn't have after school appointments available, it's that they were already taken by others who made the appointments before you. An office with, say, 2 orthodontists can only see so many people between the hours of 3-6. After they reach that many people, you either need to take a less popular time or schedule farther out. The only other option would be to hire more orthodontists, and that doesn't seem reasonable.

Yes, but in this case the ortho told me to come back in 4 weeks. I had no idea he would say that. It turned out that I could only get a free time 7 weeks later.

[Anonymous]

Because your child's school day is a low priority. They can do without 2-3 hours of likely busy work.

[Anonymous]

My kid's pediatrician has one late day per week, where she sees patients until 6 pm. We utilize that day. For the dentist, our visits are in the summer, and during Christmas break.

I don't try to do the gov't holiday/schools off thing - everyone else wants to do it too! I am fortunate enough to work from home several days a week, so I either do my medical visits on those days, or just make up the time.

Why not change your kids once per year visits to the summer? Or during Christmas or Spring break? Or do like a pp and schedule them all for the same day?

[Anonymous]

My dentist (who my kid goes to also) is a dad of two kids. I think he keeps shorter hours BECAUSE HE CAN AFFORD TO, and because he wants to spend time with his own kids. So I pull DD out of school a half hour early, so what?

The orthodontist's office has alway had great hours - early morning (DD would be late to school anyway) or 4:30 and Saturdays twice a month.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You can make this same argument for mechanics and banks. Why are they open during working hours. Because they are working hours I do agree with the OP to an extent though. Offices can stand to have certain days where they open very early (6am) and/or close late (8p). Sat appointments are also helpful.

My vent is mainly regarding daycare. Why do most daycares in the region close at 5:30-6p. Between commuting, its hard to work a full 8 hour day trying to rush to pick up my child at 6 everyday. 6:30 or 7p end times would be really helpful.

Most open at 7 am. These day care workers are paid abour $10/hr and, 10-11 hours of children is way too long. They need to go home. The rest of the world does not have to work around your schedule.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A lot of pediatricians have Saturday hours - we schedule all our well-child check-ups on Saturdays.

For other appts, I try to schedule it for my alternating Friday off, but both my kids have specialists who only work on Wednesdays for some odd reason. Thankfully, those appts are only once a quarter, but it would be easier to manage of course if they could offer Friday hours.

That may be their clinical hours and the rest of the days of the week they are engaged in hospital work, surgery, or research.

I totally get that, but my point is that only working Wednesday afternoons means each of those appts uses up 3-4 hours of leave, compared to an hour or two if I was able to get the first morning appointment of the day and then get into the office by 10am.

Thankfully, I have enough PTO to deal with it, but I have a lot more than most people. Well-child visits, sick visits, your own grown-up Dr's appts, plus the specialist appts that are only available at the most inconvenient time of the week really adds up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You can make this same argument for mechanics and banks. Why are they open during working hours. Because they are working hours I do agree with the OP to an extent though. Offices can stand to have certain days where they open very early (6am) and/or close late (8p). Sat appointments are also helpful.

My vent is mainly regarding daycare. Why do most daycares in the region close at 5:30-6p. Between commuting, its hard to work a full 8 hour day trying to rush to pick up my child at 6 everyday. 6:30 or 7p end times would be really helpful.

Most open at 7 am. These day care workers are paid abour $10/hr and, 10-11 hours of children is way too long. They need to go home. The rest of the world does not have to work around your schedule.

Actually, daycare for working parents does need to work around normal working hours. Tha's kind of the point.