"Reception process"

Today my wife attended an out patient appointment for a small dermatology procedure. The appointment was with a dermatology clinical nurse. On arriving at reception we were told we would be called by dermatology, no persons' contact name was given.

Subsequently people were being called by either their own name or a department or by the individuals' name providing the service. We were called by the nurses' name which we did not know despite having observed the different processes and going again to reception to ask who we would be called to, which they could not supply.

Surely it is possible to establish a best practice in order to avoid this confusion and surely the sole common denominator is, every patient has a name and every patient knows their name so why not use peoples' names as the common means of communication.