No-shows are a problem for both doctors and patients.
When a patient misses a doctor/nurse appointment, a follow-up or specialist appointment they are not receiving the care recommended by their doctor/nurse. This could result in the patient becoming more ill and requiring additional time off work, laying an extra burden on colleagues and bosses, there is also the risk of infecting others thus carrying additional burdens as more staff may require time of work or extra appointments. All of this holds a risk of missing deadlines, looking unprofessional and potentially disrupting the training of personnel on unit. Missing an appointment can also mean missing vital treatment, diagnosis or monitoring, and may lead to long term health problems.
On military units the doctors play a pivotal role in so many aspects of military out put, they play a part in Out of Area Preps, referrals to specialists and diagnosis. The doctors play a big part in keeping us operationally fit which contributes massively to the bigger picture. Missing an appointment could have a knock on effect to every aspect of military life, yourself may become a burden, you could infect others making them a burden, which could result in loss of training. You may not be operationally fit to meet your duties, someone else then may be asked to step in for you, but then someone will have to step up to full fill their duties. And as you see it can go round and round in a viscous circle.
Article 86 of the Uniform Code Of Military Justice. This Article covers appointed place of duty. That means from PT formation to COB that is where you will be. What a lot of Soldiers do not understand that includes appointments made by them or someone else. We have appointment times, SP times, formation times and many other start times that dictate we will be there. If a Convoy has an SP time of fifteen hundred hours and the Soldiers decide to show up late because they did not feel like getting ready on time people could die.
If they rolled out on time, they may have avoided the ambush or avoided the V-bied that hit them in the bottleneck.It sounds extreme but time management plays a critical role in the Army. When you make an appointment that spot has been reserved for you. That means if you have been given the last slot someone else is going to have to wait for another one to open up. This could be one day or one month. And because you missed it someone else is still going to have to wait when they could have had that spot and been there.
If you are going to miss the appointment or cannot make it due to mission they do allow us to cancel the appointment with in twenty four hours. The Army allows us to make appointments for whatever we need. Be it for a medical appointment, house hold goods, CIF, Smoking Sensation or whatever we need, all types of resources are available to us. But when Soldiers start missing appointments, the system starts to become inefficient. What a lot of Soldiers do not realize is that when they miss an appointment it does not just affect them; it affects the entire chain of command from the Squad Leader all the way to the First Sergeant. When a Soldier misses an appointment the squad leader must answer for the Soldier, the Squad leader must answer to the platoon Sgt.
, the Platoon Sgt. Must answer to the First Sergeant., and the First Sergeant must answer to the Battalion Sergeant Major.
