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Care Opinion

Admin Management triggering my Mental health

Posted By BleedingActivist

"Admin Management triggering my Mental health"

About: General Practices in Grampian

(as a service user),

Issues with consulting room phones having witheld numbers. All NHS depts have an extension number they can phone for a generic number to appear when phoning. Admin management at my GP have refused to acknowledge this. One GP managed a workaround when I phoned in distress after almost missing an appointment. This has not been acknowledged.

This Admin person belligerently repeated that they will try twice then I lose my appointment - its not for admin staff to decide whether I need medical help. I have multiple serious long term medical conditions. 

This issue should be addressed. Also an admin person should not be emailing me saying its my fault I cannot receive phone calls. Its unprofessional; if this member of staff doesn't understand the phone systems, they should be getting help from those who installed their phones as to how to use proper extensions, instead of making patients more unwell.

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Responses

Response from Kirsten Dickson, Quality Improvement and Assurance Facilitator, Quality Improvement and Assurance Team, NHS Grampian 3 years ago
Kirsten Dickson
Quality Improvement and Assurance Facilitator, Quality Improvement and Assurance Team,
NHS Grampian

Submitted on 05/10/2020 at 17:48
Published on Care Opinion at 17:48

picture of Kirsten Dickson

Dear BleedingActivist,

I’m sorry to hear your experience at your GP Practice has left you feeling exasperated – this isn’t how contact with any of our services should leave people feeling.

Most of the GP practices in Grampian are private contractors and don’t currently access the Care Opinion platform at the moment. I notice some of your story is directly related to the GP practice and it would be helpful to know the name of the practice so I can share it with them for reflection. If you would be willing to do that my email address is: kirsten.dickson@nhs.scot.

You have mentioned an issue with consulting room phones having their numbers hidden. This is the default with all NHS Grampian telephone lines and is in line with an agreement made by NHS Scotland Information Governance Leads to help respect and maintain patient confidentiality. It means that should an NHS service call a patient when they are not available, the caller ID will always be hidden and no details about which service the patient has been in contact with are shared. As you have mentioned most practices can select a generic line, which will advertise a number, but I expect this comes with it's own issues and using this would be a decision taken by each individual practice. If you haven’t already, and feel able, I would suggest contacting your practice and asking for meeting with the practice manager to discuss how this whole situation is affecting you and find out what they can do to help.

Take care,

Kirsten

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