The nhs is falling on its knees :(

And the health board is near Glasgow? There are EPRs in GGC, Lanarkshire, A&A, Forth Valley, D&G, Highland, Grampian, Orkney and Shetland, so I have no idea what board you're in.

Did you see my post about this?Ancient technology.

Speech to text doesn't work accurately enough for technical letters, including medical terminology. The consultant would have to sit there and manually correct every.Letter and it would take forever

Speech to text doesn't work for my line of work.Either it's not accurate enough.

I've used my speech to text program for this post. Look how inaccurate it is.
It's randomly cut off sentences in the wrong places and put full stops weather shouldn't b.e

Don't have time to correct everyone of these. Using a human isn't's not ancient technology, it still has a place

And that is, without using any technical words

You can go to a family planning clinic for free and ask for it.

She wasted 3 weeks chasing a prescription for something that is widely available.

I say for the third time: there are not electronic patient records in the health board I work in.

And yes, there are many different patient record systems which are not accessed by every department/hospital, therefore communication gets lost. It is a systems error, not human error.

exectly. Its madness that the NHS is still using such ancient technology and processes based on a senior person dictating a letter and a junior person typing it up. Hugely inefficient and time consuming. The elapsed time it takes to do that must be ridiculous and the impact is largely on patients. The NHS requires all these legions of admin staff because they lack the right tools and processes .

”Admin” roles have largely disappeared in other sectors and have not existed for years.

Patients don't have access, but that doesn't mean there aren't electronic patient records. I was talking about your personal experience saying that communication between departments doesn't happen. That's unlikely to be a failure of the patient record systems, if there's no communication that's likely to be human error.

exectly. Its madness that the NHS is still using such ancient technology and processes based on a senior person dictating a letter and a junior person typing it up. Hugely inefficient and time consuming. The elapsed time it takes to do that must be ridiculous and the impact is largely on patients. The NHS requires all these legions of admin staff because they lack the right tools and processes .

”Admin” roles have largely disappeared in other sectors and have not existed for years.

I'd be fairly sure that all the talk of patients missing NHS appointments is down to the NHS itself. My poor Mum ever knows whether she is coming or going when trying to keep track of my Dad's appointments. They get phone calls saying he has missed appointments, when no letter has been received. He gets letters after the date of the appointment. He gets appointments sent whist he is in hospital, but my Mum can't cancel them as the phones are always engaged. Info from the hospital often doesn't make it to the GP, he can't get timely appointments at the GP for things his consultants say need checking.
I have cancer and whilst the communication to me from my hospital is actually decent, the communication between departments is dire and treatment delays are appalling.

You don’t even have to see a GP, let alone a consultant, to have access to this pill.

Op’s ‘problem’ was a non issue

Ok? And? My point is you can’t just walk into your doctors and say so & so at the hospital said I need to be on this medication and this dose. Without any correspondence from that consultant that they were seen and the reason why the patient needs to be on this medication. Only then will they prescribe if clinically fit. Regardless of 6-12 months review or whatever point you were trying to make

You still do dictations!!!!!!! Fucking hell. This, this is the problem. Speech to text software is available, consultants can (and do) this. Stop with the pointless letters, and post. Most people can receive emails and texts. Yes, yes, old people, but I used to get my mother's to me, and anyone under 80 is now pretty tech savvy.

Nope, the consultant can make a recommendation based on their expertise, but the original prescriber of a medicine is responsible for ongoing supply, monitoring etc. A gynaecologist will not (and cannot) have you back for weight and BP checks every 6-12 months, this is exactly what the GP is for. If the GP then has reason not to prescribe (some clinical concern that it's inappropriate) then they should query it with the consultant. The GP (or other prescriber) needs to be satisfied that the medicine is clinically appropriate, regardless of what a letter from the consultant says.

Why does it always fall back on the Gp? If a consultant has initiated new medication it needs to come from them, they need to send a letter to the Gp so they can prescribe it, stating the medication, dose, when to take and why they are taking it. The Gp can’t just go on someone’s record and write “onthebusses says X medication was to start by X consultant, she said this is the dose” and then prescribe it! They need proof, this is how mistakes would happen.

There are many different systems and patients do not have access to online records here. I was quite clear that the service I work in does not use any electronic patient record system. So I’m not sure why you find it hard to understand.

I find this hard to understand, as NHS Scotland use Portal and can access the systems for other regions so it is all stored on the same system. There are electronic patient records, so I'm not sure what you mean. Lots of departments still use paper notes, but after discharge they're scanned onto the EPR.

For me it would work to call my GP and tell them what I need a prescription for and ask that the GP prescribe it for me please and if not I will be writing to PALS as I don't have necessary medication. It would get done then I know it would.

You still do dictations!!!!!!! Fucking hell. This, this is the problem. Speech to text software is available, consultants can (and do) this. Stop with the pointless letters, and post. Most people can receive emails and texts. Yes, yes, old people, but I used to get my mother's to me, and anyone under 80 is now pretty tech savvy.

I work in the NHS in an admin role. Am not fat, lazy or incompetent. I am however snowed under with work. My dictations are at least 4 weeks behind because of the sheer volume of work. This year I have gone from a manageable amount of work if I worked really hard to at least double the amount. It is totally unmanageable and I think that this is largely to blame for the delay in clinical letters with instructions for prescription changes etc. The consultants do tend to indicate when a dictation is urgent and that is done within 24 hours. Sometimes a patient will call and if I can identify the dictation from the hundreds of dictations in my queue I will type it. If not it has to wait until it is next (if we can get it typed that saves another call about the same thing in a few days). No-one is deliberately delaying these.

Typing letters is a very small part of our total job. We deal with adding referrals to the electronic system (our referral letters don’t go anywhere physically so don’t get lost), printing, changes to clinics, all phone calls from patients, any requests from consultants plus loads more. We are not supposed to make appointments but sometimes it is just easier to do this rather than ask the correct department to do it and then keep checking it’s been done.

If you haven’t done this job you cannot imagine how much pressure we are under. We have such a high level of sickness (quite a lot due to stress) that we always have extra work added too. Today I had 2 other secretaries phones to cover, very little typing got done and so the dictation queue got longer and more patients are waiting for letters to go to their GPs and the phone calls keep coming. It’s a vicious circle.

I agree that updating the IT system would help but it all costs money - there’s always money for another manager. Not so much, but some for new consultants and definitely none for admin staff whose work load always increases with the new managers and consultants starting.

Since moving to Scotland, I’ve experienced many more organisational issues with the NHS due to the woefully inadequate patient record systems. Communication between departments often just does not happen, or is recorded on different systems. I was recently diagnosed with a serous rare condition and am under multiple departments and hospitals as a result. I am now essentially in a role of care co-ordinator for myself, spending so much time having to contact departments in an attempt to improve communication. It’s not right.

I also work for the NHS, in mental health. There are NO electronic patient records! Which means so much important information gets lost and/or cannot be accessed. Talk about being stuck in the dark ages.

We’re all responsible for the state it’s in.
For example, the number of wasted appointments where people cba to turn up/phone to cancel or change the appointment, not only in hospitals but in surgeries etc too.
The volume of wasted medications- as a District Nurse I was horrified at the stock piling and sheer waste of medication and money. One patient had over £8k worth of unused tablets, he’d just kept ticking the repeat box despite having no intention of taking them. This was far from unusual, ask any pharmacy how many tablets they are sent for destruction- one I know of has the equivalent of a small skip every week.
The numbers of people turning up in A&E with minor ailments that a pharmacist could advise on or treat is enormous and a huge waste of time, money and resources. The days of treating minor ailments yourself seem to have gone.
People sometimes seem incapable of taking responsibility for their own health and expect someone else to sort them out, look at the rise in obesity, type 2 diabetes etc.

It saved my mum's life when she had cancer, my wife when she suffered a major haemorrhage during child birth, used her donated organs after she died to save multiple other people. And that's shit in your opinion? Frankly you can bugger off