"Phone management needs to change"

Our NHS is under a lot of pressure, and I have a lot of admiration for the hard word an dedication of all NHS staff. I encourage anyone and everyone to engage with this surgery for whatever you might need. My feedback for the surgery however, is to encourage a cultural shift in the management of the reception. Everyone there is very pleasant, but the management of the phone line, and the IVR messaging makes me, as a patient, feel like an inconvenience. Even in the face of extremely busy times, people should feel able to contact the surgery, and that contacting the surgery is not them being a burden to the service. Week of 27th September, there is a very condescending message stating the fuel crisis and staff illness means they can only talk to people who have an urgent issue. That means many different things to many different people. Building up the courage to call the doctors for some is a big deal, and I fear this type of communication management is unhelpful, and dangerous. I encourage an examination of the management of the work stream, and patient first approach to developing a more cautious communication strategy. A simple IVR routing system would also be more helpful than them simply turning their phone line off for large portions of the week.