Emailing Consultants (NHS)

[ChimChimChiroo]

Does anyone find it totally inappropriate for a patient to obtain a Consultant or other medical professionals email and email them without prior consent?

What do you think about recording consultations- it seems very common now?

It’s pretty easy to guess an email. Patient is unlikely to get an answer unless email contact has been previously agreed.

It’s fine. 🤷🏻‍♀️ I mean, personally it’s more expedient to go through consultant’s secretaries because they do a lot of the behind the scenes making things happen and can triage the enquiry so it gets handled by the appropriate person (who may not be the consultant). But I email my consultant (via his secretary) all the time. It’s much more helpful because I can explain exactly what’s going on, which attaches right to my record and I can send photos. I saw my consultant yesterday and he thanked me for doing so because it meant he could pick up an issue and get it dealt with.

Recording has long been a done thing because some people struggle cognitively to process lots of technical information, especially if they have no family support at the consultation. Not something I personally do, but fine as long as you ask permission. I have had consultants audio record consultations themselves for transcription into my record.

I felt it was always considered a total NO NO to email and pretty rude and the general consensus at work is its a NO. Just wondered what everyone thought.

I dont mind the recording. Many colleagues still say NO … that is IF they are asked. You can often tell someone is secretly recording. It used to be occasionally now its very frequent.

times have changed!

ty for commenting

Emailing- without prior agreement? No.
Recording a consultation- policy is that it’s allowed. Only an issue if patient uses to recording for anything other than personal use. Recording appointments for transcription onto EPR is quite different IMO, means the clinician can focus on patient rather than trying to type and listen, not everyone can touch type.

I don't mind recording. Just saying you are happy with it generally eases the atmosphere straight away.

Emailing - an absolute no. Yes a lot of nhs emails are very very guessable. However in most jobs now emails go to a pooled team or secretary email to prevent urgent emails being ignored for days while the recipient is off work. And to protect recipients from being harrassed by frequent emails.

We don't give out personal mobile numbers for the same reason - everything goes to a team phone. Back in the day when we did give them out someone came back to work after a few weeks and found a voicemail from a critically ill patient asking for urgent assessment which had just sat in their voicemail.

I think it’s rude on the consultant’s part if there isn’t some kind of email given out to the patient, doesn’t have to be a personal email; could be a team or secretary’s email.

I don’t think it’s any more rude to email a consultant than any other professional. They’re doctors, not gods.

I am a med sec for consultants so:

Emailing a consultant directly by guessing their email is extremely arrogant and disrespectful to the consultant and the secretary. Anyone who does this to my consultants can get their head bitten off by the consultant and rightly so because it undermines the consultants' busy workload, personal and professional boundaries, communications preferences and right to control their own workload how they see fit without intrusion.

We exist as secretaries to reduce admin workload for consultants freeing them to do the doctoring that they are hired to do. Many queries we can answer ourselves and if not we can escalate for you and ensure responses. If you email me I can chase the consultant for a reply, signpost you if appropriate, involve nurses if necessary, and if the dr is on leave or off sick, escalate urgent queries to the on call team to get you sorted quicker.

Many consultants are poorly organised and rely on their secs to remind them, chase them and support them and we can't do that if you don't communicate with us.

Bypass a secretary and you show a disregard for the consultants' time and boundaries and you undermine the secretary, do not do this.

R/e recording the conversations, I am not a fan of this. Many drs will copy you into your clinic letter if you ask and as secretaries we will answer questions however you need so there should be no need to record. Recording is intrusive and makes some consultants feel uncomfortable and anxious which isnt nice especially when patients then misinterpret what is said and try to use recordings to threaten the consultants. Also, that consultation is private not for you to post on social or share with who you please without consent from the dr.

At the end of the day a decent secretary will go above and beyond for you - I always do for our patients but if you disrespect our boundaries consultants will be less inclined to help you. There's no need to contact a consultant direct, I am happy for all my patients to have my direct email and phone number and I respond to every call, email and voicemail I get.

Processes and secs exist for a reason, respect them and they will respect you.

Total no no. All communication should go via relevant department/secretary.

I’m medical myself and even I speak to the secretary rather than the consultant themselves unless I have a close relationship with them.

We recorded my husband’s consultation with a hip specialist. Of course we asked first. But we’d been waiting years to see a specialist and wanted to be able to remember everything that was said. She was amazing, then gave us her email. Since then my husband has emailed a couple of times with follow up questions. We were very grateful to be able to do that.

I have about 8 consultants. 2 of them I email directly as their secretary's are shit the others i don't need to as their secretary's are on top of things. I always get a response and quite quickly. This has been happening for years and they've never said not to.

Why is it 'extremely arrogant'? Or disrespectful? I can see that it might not be the best, or even quickest, way to get a response, but it's neither arrogant nor disrespectful.

The days of staff and patients bowing down to consultants in their cravats and bow ties have long gone thank goodness., speaking from personal clinical experience.

Because the whole point of a secretary is to be the front line staff for these queries to free the doctor up to focus on the medical side. Obviously if we cant answer the question we will escalate but there are so many questions we deal with daily that a consultant doesn't need involving for example:

• Are test results in - we can tell you if they are in and if the results letter has been done we can read that to you too.

• Dvla queries - we can confirm if we have received paperwork, driving advice, next steps etc.

• Appt dates and times - we can check the system and confirm. We cant always predict where you are on the waiting list but we can give you rough waiting times and advice.

• Guidance on medicines/medical info - anything that has been documented on your record we can reiterate.

There are many, many, many queries we get daily that we can answer as the info is readily available to us. But if hundreds and hundreds of patients decide to email the consultants, you are blocking up their inbox with queries that they may not need to be involved in making it take longer for them to get to stuff they DO need to get involved in, which is inconsiderate and disrespectful.

Everyone is different but I can guarantee you a lot of consultants will not reply to direct patient emails but they will reply to secretaries becauae they trust us to be sensible and to email them stuff we genuinely can't answer, not Jane Doe's query that is not clinically urgent.

It's not about bowing down it's about being mindful of efficiency. Do you want your £120k salaried consultant replying to emails about apppintments and telling you to contact their secretary or do you want the secretary to answer the question for you so the consultant can focus on sorting our your prescription, diagnosing you, performing your procedure/treatment, actioning your abnormal test results?

Most patients who think their query is urgent is not and most patients who are really sick and need help yesterday "don't want to be a bother".

Also love the assumption that you think I'm old and harking back to the good old days, I'm <40. 😆

How on earth are patients meant to know it’s hugely disrespectful and arrogant That seems a very over the top response, and making huge assumptions about patients who are frequently very stressed and trying to navigate what can be a very unclear system, where it is very difficult to get any help or answer to simple questions. I hope that wherever you work makes it very easy and clear as to how patients can get help, and are prompt to answer, because all too often it’s very virtually impossible form outside the system to know. And having a name and an email to go to is at least a starting point.

Well it sounds like your organisation (or its consultants) isn’t using email as effectively as it could. I’m retired now, but for the best part of 20 years had a secretary / PA / EA. They had full access to my email and calendar, and would organise my email for me. Responding where necessary, flagging for my attention, filing or deleting. I’d expect everyone to contact me directly, unless it was a EA to EA or whoever backwards and forwards on correspondence, scheduling meetings, travel etc, but that my EA would sort it all out.

My late husband was under various consultants for the best part of 25 years, and for most of them we’d always go direct. Whether it was the consultant or their secretary that responded I have no idea. The arrogance, if it exists, is that of a consultant who thinks they are above being contactable, IMO.

I have an amazing secretary. So many of the queries she can either sort, or pre emptively gather the information I need to sort, so really speeds things up. And if I’m off sick/on leave/having a really busy ward work and can’t get near my email, she knows and snags someone else. Which is much safer.

I have done this: it’s not hard and it’s not inappropriate. I couldn’t get an answer to the question any other way, so I emailed them.

Consultants aren’t gods.

I didn't suggest you are old @NHStress, I was referring to the deferential way consultants used to be treated

I still don't understand why it's arrogant or disrespectful to email a consultant. If you re-read my post, you'll see I specifically mentioned that it might not be the best or quickest way to get a response, obviously if it's an administrative issue, it would be entirely inappropriate.

Some - usually younger - consultants trust their patients to communicate directly, I'm in Europe now and it's actively encouraged by my consultants. They trust people not to be idiots and email them appropriately if they need advice. And even in the UK, when one of my adult DCs was seriously ill in a different hospital to the one her consultant was at, he and I messaged back and forth many times.

Im under multiple trusts and its only my local hospital that think they are above talking to patients my other hospital consultants who are significantly higher up then my local hospital have absolutely no issue communicating with me through emails, calls and face to face often within hours of me contacting them. The consultants at my local hospital always appear shocked when I say its the actual consultant im communicating with and not a secretary as they just weirdly think they are above that which i find so bizzare as its one of the worst rated hospitals in the uk with real bottom of the barrel drs yet they genuinely think their god even though the reason i have to travel all over the country in the first place to see specialists is because they don't understand or know my condition

My local hospital has got rid of all medical secretaries across the trust but I’d still never email a consultant. I don’t think anyone who guesses an email and does so should expect an answer. I used to work in the Trust and would never have done such a thing, not even with the consultants I knew through work.

This ive never emailed admin queries to a consultant its usually things like being hospitalised in another trust or urgent/emergency issues. I obviously wouldn't email them to ask what time an appointment is as I can get that information from other sources.

Ive never guessed an email I've either been given them or once I got one online and the consultant emailed back a better email address to contact him on.

I think the biggest thing here what people aren't addressing is their are 2 different types of patients. Patients who have been under the same consultant for 10/20 years for a rare complicated condition that needs more specialised care. Or a random patient who sees a consultant once and then bombarded them with a load of questions that could be easily found elsewhere. The latter is not ok. The other absolutely is and is something I've been doing for years without issue

I was told to email them about my lack of follow-up appt after starting new medication. The GP told me where to find the email address

I agree. I'm an accountant. All my clients have my personal email address and my personal phone number. I don't understand why doctors/consultants think they should be any different.

No bad form - they have secretaries for this reason - if every patient did emailed their consultants would be bombarded with patients queries - That is what a medical secretary is for and they are all amazing!