Helpful vocabulary for making medical appointments

Getting an appointment with one’s généraliste (GP) without a frustrating wait of a few weeks seems to be increasingly difficult – in my experience, at least. This might not correspond with that of all Connexion readers.

Of course, any condition or injury requiring urgent attention can be seen to at the urgences (emergency) department of one’s local hospital, and you can always give your doctor – or more likely their secretary (secrétaire) – a call and plead for a last-minute appointment.

The other alternative comes via the excellent and handy Doctolib website or app, which informs you by email of any cancellations that free up an appointment sooner than your original rendez-vous. However, this process is not entirely without its downsides – not least the pulse-quickening receipt of the aforementioned email, which invokes a sense of hurried panic as you rush to take the new appointment before anyone else.

The email will have been sent to all the GP’s other patients with an existing appointment, so it’s a question of first-come, first-served (premier arrivé, premier servi). I once got an email and, within a minute, the new appointment had gone.

The French word for a timeslot in this context is créneau – the email header reads ‘Un créneau s’est libéré plus tôt’ (A slot has become free sooner). It stems from the Latin crena, meaning notch or incision, which evolved into crenel in Old French, referring to a castle’s battlement (crenellations).

The other context in which you will hear the word créneau is when parking your car using your rétroviseurs (wing mirrors) – faire un créneau means to parallel park.