OMG, yes, yes, yes!!
My BP reads at home: 120/70. My BP reads at the doctors’: 130/85. My home monitor has been checked/calibrated by the doctors’ office. The doc once joked that I should bring a cat to my appointments to help calm me down and keep my BP low. 
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White coat syndrome is well known. I almost always get a second reading at the end of my appointments.
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Haha—my BP is low at beginning & end of visit—like 90/60.
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Based on my experience, dental offices should not be permitted to take patients’ blood pressure. The misreadings are astronomical compared to what occurs at a physician’s office.
Dentists use an automated wrist cuff blood pressure reader, doctors office nurses read by holding the patient’s wrist. Shockingly different results.
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Wrist cuffs tend not to be nearly as accurate as other means of measuring blood pressure.
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Every time I have a doctor’s appointment, I take my blood pressure a few times beforehand to show that my BP is well within the normal range.
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Seems like the automated arm cuff is more common these days.
I did have a dental office tell me that once they told a patient to go directly to the emergency room because their blood pressure was in the medical emergency range.
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And I (a regular blood donor since I was 18) who have normal BP in a doctor’s office, typically register something sky high when the Red Cross folks take it! I always need to tell them to take it again after the intake is over, the finger prick has been done, etc. The phlebotomist told me last time that it frequently happens when someone hydrates quickly (like drinking a large iced coffee while en route)– they see it at every blood drive. Don’t know if that’s medically sound or not!
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At my primary Dr my blood pressure is usually 110/70. I was just at my mammogram apt yesterday and it was 130/73 and the nurse was like that’s high for you. It just always surprises me that some of them are surprised. Like, it’s a cancer hospital - scanxiety is real!
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We have a standing routine at my internist. They take my blood pressure when I arrive – it is always high. After my bloodwork and checkup are complete, my internist re-takes my blood pressure and it is always back to the normal range.
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My cardiologist’s office is much more thorough with blood pressure than my PCP. Pressure in both arms, sitting, standing. Correlates to what BP is at home. At my PCP, quick check, cuff never on quite correctly. Big difference in readings. Thankfully my cardiologist is the one in charge of my meds!
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The first time a dentist’s office checked my blood pressure via wrist cuffs, the reading (highly inaccurate result) was so bad, I should have been taken to an ER immediately. Set off a chain of events that led me to be wary of the medical community (and led to the head of cardiology at one heart hospital to be fired). Wow ! What some doctors/surgeons will do for money is criminal and very disturbing.
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I do the same
I have serious white coat syndrome. I had to have an echo this week and my blood pressure was through the roof when I arrived. Afterwards, back to my usual which is thankfully what the tech recorded in my record.
I also have a super bad history of having “difficult” veins and have had some horror stories having to do blood work. As such, I always schedule my blood work ahead of my physical so I’m not crazy anxious anticipating the blood draw. We get a discount on our health insurance if we meet certain biometrics so I don’t want an abnormally high blood pressure to screw that up ; )
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I was at my PCP office on Wed and a woman came in and said she’d been sent there by the hospital surgery center because her BP was 215+. She had a woman helping her (maybe a medical appt driver?) and neither really knew what was going on, just that she was told to get there ASAP. Um, shouldn’t she have just gone to the ER right there at the hospital?
This was an older woman, probably in her 70s, and overweight, but this doctor’s office wouldn’t have equipment to do more than an ekg, bp, monitor her for a little bit.
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My reading via wrist cuff at the dentist’s office was significantly higher than 215, but we all did nothing because it was obvious that there was no heart related event or distress of any kind.
Nevertheless, a couple of weeks later I went to a heart hospital to get a check-up. EKG had an unusual reading. Head of cardiology wanted to crack my chest open in order to insert a stent. I refused and went for a treadmill test. After one hour on the treadmill, the doctors & nurses said that I was only the second patient in history at that heart hospital who did not significantly raise their BP on the treadmill test. The other was a highly competitive marathon runner. Yet the French Canadian Head of cardiology (lead heart surgeon) still wanted to crack open my chest & place a stent in me. Another cardiologist asked me to come into her office and, after closing the door, stated she and others had reviewed my file and suspected that the unusual EKG reading was due to my heart being unusually strong. She asked if I had trained as/like an Olympic athlete. I told her that I had for a couple of decades; she said that explained the EKG reading = my heart was unusually strong & I was in great shape.
Soon thereafter, the French-Canadian Head of Cardiology heart surgeon moved on to the next city.
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I believe that nurses/techs are checking pulse by holding patients’ wrists. BP requires a cuff of some kind to be inflated, then released. In the past this was done by med person inflating cuff with a small hand pump and then using stethoscope on pt’s inner elbow and round gauge to measure diastolic pressure, then releasing air from cuff to measure systolic. (Sorry, I may be mixing up the two readings.) Machines now do it all, once cuff is in place.
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When we were doing a lot of BP testing, my staff greatly preferred manual pump & stethoscope and felt it was much more accurate. My friend who is a retired nurse says the wrist BP monitor she bought at CVS was accurate enough to let her know she was having a problem & get her to medical attention where she was diagnosed with sepsis & promptly treated.
My bp is sky high in the doctor’s office. As soon as that stupid cuff begins to squeeze my arm, my bp goes up. I told my doctor that they need to figure out a different way to determine bp! I take it at home, where it’s lower - still goes up from the squeeze, but I don’t have the additional stress of being in a doctor’s office. My PCP told me to let her know if it starts rising higher at home.
My H has the same issue, and his PCP wanted to put him on bp meds. Instead, he made an appointment with a cardiologist for testing. She found that his heart is healthy & he doesn’t need meds. It’s been years since he started seeing the cardiologist, and still no meds.