"Appointment cancelled when we were 6 minutes late!"

We had an appointment at Forth Valley Royal infirmary (Larbert) for my young daughter to have a scan for a heart murmur that has been discovered. My daughter was very nervous about the appointment, as any child would be, and was asking what would happen when we got there.

When we got to the hospital, we got the car parked and headed in. When we got into the hospital my daughter complained of needing the toilet. I took her to the toilet and due to nerves I believe, she had a bad case of diarrhoea. Due to this, we were 6 minutes late getting to the correct location for the appointment. When we got there, out of breath as we had clearly been rushing to get there, I handed over the appointment letter to the receptionist and apologised for being late - without even looking at the clock she automatically told us we had missed our appointment.

Now, I do understand that everyone should make a point of being there in plenty time for appointments, however I feel that given the situation of a nervous child etc that the hospital could have worked with us to possibly fit us in. We were literally 6 minutes late and there were only 3 other people in the waiting room.

I am disappointed, as is my daughter, that we were treated like this. We will now need to go through the whole scenario again, with trying to calm my daughters nerves for the rearranged appointment.

We were given another appointment at the time but were requested by the receptionist to 'try and be there on time'. We did not choose to be late! I feel these are very poor standards and show a complete lack of professionalism.