On Tuesday, Dec 16, 2003, at 17:11 Europe/London, Williams David G
(RLN) City Hospitals Sunderland - Clinical Scientist wrote:
> We had a look at this last year. There is not too much of a problem
> with
> results generated from the hospital, the relevant requesting doctor can
> usually be found. Occasionally there are problems with some doctors
> who are
> annoyed at being awakened by a telephone call, but that begs the
> question,
> if the request wasn't that urgent, why ask for it.
1 Often the person on duty won't be the requester. This will happen
more and more both in primary and secondary care as clinician's working
hours become sensible.
2 Because laboratory medicine investigations sometimes provide new,
valuable and surprising clinical information.
3 Most of our analyses after 1700 aren't because the request was
clinically urgent: it's just better to run the laboratory that way.
>
> The GP's were on the whole unwilling to make any accommodation for
> urgent
> requests. One perennial problem is trying to get the result through to
> a
> permanently engaged number - by the time it finally rings, the surgery
> is
> usually closed and you are diverted to the deputising service.
> Depending on
> which service you get, some will contact the relevant doctor, some
> will not.
>
> As some 80% of all GP's have stated that they are going to give up
> night
> work after April, this could prove to be a real problem.
I think the shift of responsibility to PCOs will make this situation
simpler, as OOH arrangements will become more formalised and more
consistent and better communications options appear: see the response
from Wayne Bradbury.
Perhaps the most useful things we can do are:
1 Continue to share experiences
2 Make sure LM reports are available to the OOH practitioners. Once
you've made the decision to only use 'net technology it isn't too hard
to roll out access quickly and cheaply.
Jonathan
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