The appointment that never happens
You need to see the dentist. You have needed to see the dentist for months, possibly years. You think about it regularly. You may have even looked up the phone number. But the appointment never gets scheduled. And if it does get scheduled, there is a real chance you will cancel, forget, or arrive on the wrong day.
Medical and dental appointments are a perfect storm of ADHD challenges. They require initiating a phone call (often the hardest type of task), planning around a future date (time blindness makes this unreliable), managing paperwork and insurance details (working memory overload), and tolerating an unpleasant sensory experience (waiting rooms, dental procedures, medical anxiety).
The specific barriers at each stage
Making the call. Phone calls require real-time processing, sustained attention, and social performance without visual cues. Many people with ADHD avoid phone calls in general. Adding the complexity of navigating a medical office's phone tree, providing insurance information, and coordinating schedules makes it exponentially harder. This is the stage where most ADHD appointment avoidance gets stuck.
Remembering the appointment. Once scheduled, the appointment enters the "not now" time zone. Faraone et al. (2021) documented impaired time perception as a core ADHD feature. An appointment three weeks away may as well not exist until the morning of.
Arriving prepared. Bring your insurance card, fill out these forms beforehand, fast before your blood work, remember your medication list. Each preparation step is a separate executive function demand that compounds the difficulty.
The appointment itself. Waiting rooms with no stimulation. Sensory-intense procedures. Having to communicate symptoms accurately while stressed. Then receiving follow-up instructions that need to be remembered and acted on.
A system for making appointments actually happen
- Book online whenever possible. Many dental and medical offices now offer online scheduling. This removes the phone call barrier entirely. Search your provider's website for a patient portal before assuming you need to call.
- Schedule the next appointment before leaving the current one. This is the single most effective strategy. When you are physically at the office, the barrier to scheduling is at its lowest. Ask the front desk to book your next visit before you walk out the door.
- Set multiple reminders. One reminder is not enough. Set three: one week before, one day before, and two hours before. Use UpOrbit and your phone calendar together. The appointment needs to intrude on your attention multiple times to survive the object permanence problem.
- Prepare everything the night before. Insurance card, forms, medication list, questions for the doctor. Put them by the door or in your car. Reduce the morning-of executive function demands to zero. A clear folder for medical paperwork you can grab and go.
- Bring sensory support. Noise-canceling headphones for the waiting room. A podcast or music for long waits. A fidget tool for the anxiety. These are not indulgences. They are practical tools that make the experience tolerable.
Communicating with your provider
If you are comfortable doing so, tell your doctor or dentist that you have ADHD. This contextualizes missed appointments and helps them communicate more effectively. Ask for written instructions rather than verbal ones. Request that follow-up tasks be as specific as possible: "Take this medication twice daily" is better than "follow up as needed."
References
- Faraone et al. (2021). World Federation of ADHD Consensus Statement. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 128, 789-818.
- Barkley, R.A. (2015). Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, 4th ed. Guilford Press.