Personally I think you need access to a PA at least during office hours.
Arranging your own appointments (particularly with other people who don't
have PAs) is time consuming (and expensive to the trust). Chasing up notes
and results equally so. And useful to have someone to screen phone calls for
importance and urgency. Entirely possible to share the PA between
consultants depending on workload. I'd think that the one PA/ secretary for
two consultants is about as low as you can go for the requirement for
maximum efficiency in a busy department particularly if undergraduate
students are taught and clinics are run. Being flexible and sharing PAs/
secretaries is clearly more effective than having one person who may be on
leave when they are needed. Actual typing could probably be done by the
consultant provided there was an appropriate terminal to hand and a bit of
time spent learning to type (the advantage of dictating instead of typing is
that a tape machine is more portable).
I agree that I don't often send letters; and when I do it is usually for
official purposes (as often as not I discuss the letter with the person I'm
sending it to before sending it and ask them whether they'd like to receive
it, or if I should make any alterations before it is sent). When I do, I
find the secretaries are better than I am at tidying up the appearance. Also
useful for e-mailing a secretary a document that needs printing and getting
them to do the printing and collating of copies and sending them out to
appropriate people.
If you are running at under 0.5 secretaries per consultant and feel they are
underworked I would suggest that you may not be delegating as much as you
should. The number needed per consultant may well drop off in a larger
department, though; and also as consultant numbers increase secretarial work
will not increase proportionately.
Matt Dunn
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