Dr Doctor please refer this patient..

Patients generally land in ITU with a complicated medical history and numerous ongoing problems, some of which may have been investigated in a completely different hospital. The challenge is often to obtain the relevant scan report/microbiology result/clinical opinion from said hospital, in as few moves as possible. This involves a LOT of time on the phone, and much use of the ladies on switchboard.

Yesterday I was tasked with obtaining scan reports and haematology results from my patient's first hospital and then referring them to the haematologists in our hospital. This involved a lot of talking to switchboard. Now on the whole switchboard ladies are fabulous, but yesterday I kept getting through to World's Grumpiest Operator. When I asked to be put through to Hospital X, instead of pushing the one button that would have transferred me simply and easily she instead gave me the direct dial number in a disparaging tone and slammed the phone down. Obediently I used the direct dial number each time I needed to get through to Hospital X the numerous times it took me to get the information I needed (or rather discover the haematology results arent back yet and the scan report is still unverified). Then it was with trepidation that I had to phone our Switchboard to get the bleep number of the on-call haematology registrar which World's Grumpiest Operator snapped down the phone at me in such a way that I almost apologised for not having already known the number myself.

So I bleeped the number and who should phone back but a similarly grumpy grumpy chap who introduced himself as the mumblemumble registrar. Considering that I had managed to get hold of some sort of registrar and on balance they were probably from haematology I proceeded to present the case, emphasising our concerns over the patient's low platelet count and low white cell count and low haemoglobin and finished by saying we would really appreciate it if he could come and review the patient. There was a long pause and then a somewhat exasperated "You do know you're talking to a UROLOGIST right?" How embarrassing - completely wrong person, and a surgeon at that - they're far too busy to listen to pointless referrals! Cue much flustered apologising.

Who knows, maybe he'd also pissed off World's Grumpiest Operator and she decided to get a rise out of both of us!