On average, I answer around 20 phone calls a day. The number could easily touch 50 on busy days. Some of the calls were not exactly important, and to try to cut down the number, I have asked my main wards to start emailing me results. It also could help in minimising confusion as instructions especially drug dosages and drug names could be spelled out very clearly.
Buy lately, the problem I had was the staff took a long time replying, or worse still did not reply back. I couldn't tell if the messages actually got through or otherwise. As some of the instructions need to be carried out immediately, I ended up picking up the phone and actually dialing through. Defeating the purpose of using emails in the first place I would've thought.
But things were improving. Hopefully the number of calls could be cut out further ....
