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?

Obviously it’s ok if the consultant has handed their email address out but otherwise no. I appreciate different places will do it differently.

I gave an answer upthread but as a consultant I'll answer again.

My specialty is generally quite fast moving - if you email me personally and I'm on holiday it's isn't safe for your question to linger in my inbox until I get back.

That said most of the questions I get asked when patients phone don't actually need me personally to answer. Or even are absolutely nothing to do with me. My secretary is great at filtering them so I only get the ones that genuinely can only be answered by me. She is worth her weight in gold.

Also a lot of us have learned the hard way never to give out our phone numbers - years later a relative decides to phone up and ask randomly for some advice about their cousin - just no. Or worse the patient who sees it as a hotline to you and starts phoning multiple times a day. It's a nice idea but it doesn't withstand the demands of some members of the public.

So for one of husbands consultants I email him with his consent. His secretary rarely seems to answer her phone- and he is happy as it's NHS to NHS email and therefore is happy. My FIL emailed him though and I was furious- mainly as I am NOK and DHs carer and I felt it was a lack of respect. Also he is notorious for complaining... I am hoping it gets ignored as their was no consent to email him.....
I don't like patients recording sessions- however I am happy to send them a copy of the AI notes via letter to their referrer (who can upload them on the NHS app which I don't have access to)....

Has literally no one noticed that this is a zombie that this poster resurrected?! 🧟🧟‍♂️

They are not all amazing some are some are terrible and are completely incompetent. Just like any job.

I agree. DH's haematologist's secretary is as much use as a chocolate fireguard, that's if she actually picks up the phone. He's taken to going in person to her office as the only way to communicate with her. When he's stood outside about the knock, he says he nearly always hears her phone ringing which she just ignores. He only found out where her office was when he had to hand deliver a second CD of a private MRI scan after the first CD he handed over the reception desk got "lost" and he insisted on handing it to her in person to avoid yet another getting lost, and thankfully the receptionist told him her office room number!

i think the NHS is currently such a shitshow people will try anything. I had a long wait for urology and then a five minute appointment with a predetermined outcome based on what appeared to be my being a middle aged woman.
medicine given with no correlation to symptoms.
I’ve tried emailing secretaries and had no acknowledgment
more recently my letter following an appointment was complete fantasy and reflected nothing of the frequency and severity of symptoms which I had been at pains to explain.

Dh is a Consultant, at any one time he has about 200 unread emails in his inbox, he can never get on top of them (nowhere near enough admin time). So it would be far quicker to contact his secretary.

I’ve certainly emailed the consultant with the email address I have been given - I assume it went to the secretary though and it meant I was able to pass on documents, test result reports etc relating to my previous consultations and care elsewhere prior to the appointment and give them an overview of the situation prior to meeting with them.

Gets all of the information in one place quickly.

I also record consultations due to bad behaviour from a previous consultant against whom I had to make a formal complaint and he repeatedly lied in the hospitals investigation about what he had said to me. It was despicable behaviour from him and the hospital were not much better.

Therefore in the future I want a record of the consultation in case of a similar situation.

I’m sure lots of professionals have full in trays. Not sure why nhs consultants think they should be different.

a few years ago I had surgery on a fractured shoulder. Afterwards while I was being followed up, I needed to speak to either him or one of the admins….i think I hadn’t received a follow up appointment or something. The phone number I had wasn’t working, tried everything on the hospital website, no generic email for the team. I work for the NHS so know the way emails addresses are allocated so I went into my work email account and worked out his address.

it wasn’t the consultant, and I expected to go through the admins or for my email to be forwarded onto them for them to respond to. IIRC I did apologise for emailing him directly. IMO , and I said it to him when I spoke to him, there should’ve been proper systems in place to avoid it. He was fine with it and my query got dealt with by one of the admin team.

I don’t think consultants are alone in not having enough ‘admin time’, but surely a secretary should be on top of their manager/boss/consultants inbox?

No she has her own unmanageable workload, and lots of his emails would be impossible for her to answer or make a decision on. But yes that’s why as a patient it’s best to email or phone the secretary as they can then flag it up to the Consultant. Phone calls are best, if she can she deals with it, if not she texts him to ring the patient.

one of our consultants seems to have her email address available to her patients, we do feel concerned for her, i tried to give a patient our email but she replied that she had found the address from a friend.
i dont think it is right or fair, speaking as a med sec

Absolute no no unless the Consultant has agreed to this and given you their details

Im a HCP and some one once found my email address, it went into junk and was automatically deleted

My Consultant specifically has no unsolicited email referrals/ enquiries from patients and gives PA details

No. If they work for the NHS they are in public service. If they want to ignore your email equally they're welcome to do so. But the act of attempting to contact them seems perfectly reasonable?! You'd be better off with their secretary or admin team though.

Not when the usual route is via GP/ private referral
If they allowed this they would get millions of " can you look at my piles/bunions" requests

Oh yeah that's true. I thought they meant consultant you were already under, about an ailment he/she was actually treating.

Not just a random consultant for an illness you think you've got who you've never spoken to or had an appointment with. You shouldn't do that. Well if you do you'll be totally ignored!

Ds4's paediatrician has always told me to email her if there is a problem or phone her secretary if it's urgent. So that's what I do.

His ent dr hasn't said to do that so if I have a problem I will talk to his secretary.

The max fax dr I talk to the admin team and they either talk to the consultant or the specialist nurse.

I don’t subscribe to the view that consultants are akin to God but i have always gone through the secretary. Some of very good, some are crap.

Phone calls are only "best" if they actually answer the phone.

Yes I agree, and not every Consultant has their own secretary anymore. It’s very common for 3 consultants or more to share one secretary now, and most of them were downbanded in our Trust from a 4 to a 3 too 😡

This exactly, also a consultant.

When I worked in the NHS the secretaries had access to the consultant's email and did a lot of filtering.
It's not easy to even get hold of a secretary now. The two hospitals where I am a patient have what they call "patient admin" who work completely separate from the consultants.

The last thing I’d want is a consultant to be is distracted by admin that should be being handled by the admin team. They’re only human and they should have their energies and focus on clinical care. People treating medic, teachers and the like as a private concierge service is bang out of order. If you want that go private.