… you do a twelve hour call-taking shift, and the only person to be rude to you all day is the woman from NHS Direct in Sheffield.
Published Nov 06, 2006 -
That’s people from Sheffield for you…
*laughs hysterically* today must be the closing date for the “funniest blog of the year” award! Poor Mr Man is sleeping on the sofa and I keep waking him up with my laughing!
Thats NHSD for you.
Sheffield is full of lovely people!
Oi - I’m from Sheffield!
NHSD weren’t too bad when I spoke with them a while ago. I didn’t want to bother my out of hours Doctor.
I think the issue is with people who just get so far up their own arse they don’t care who they’re talking to, they’ll be snooty and expect to get everything their own way.
Before we go down that road, I have nothing against NHSD or people from Sheffield, just this one particular grumpy old bag with no manners!
Methinks you’ve tempted fate and are likely to get nothing but abuse tomorrow - bit like the Q word. Thanks for making me smile - am currently humming Miracles by Hot Chocolate!
….Before we go down that road, I have nothing against NHSD or people from Sheffield, just this one particular grumpy old bag with no manners!..
You mean you have days when NHSD aren’t rude to you? It’s not a Sheffield thing believe me……………
SD
NHSD rude how odd……….
Odd that it was only once in a shift!!
It’s the BIG FISH in a little pond syndrome. NHSD and Out of Hours services seem to attract ex doctor’s receptionists and matrons who have spent their working life snapping at the smaller fish. Put them in a bigger pond though…
I work for NHSD, and I’m not rude to anyone. I’d like to be, but that sort of thing gets frowned on at this site.
Dullahan_999, you’re absolutely right, I wouldn’t want to do ambulance control. You guys must have nerves of steel. We get to deal with the whole breadth of medical issues rather than only emergencies. The balance keeps me sane.
May I also say, I’m not in Sheffield.
hmmm well me having not been in control very long….two months not very long to be precise….i’ve found that the majority of nhsd i have spoken to have been rude, even the ones which work in the same building just down the blinking corridor…..i love nhsd i think its fantastic way of stopping people calling us but could they be tad politer when calling??
“It’s the BIG FISH in a little pond syndrome. NHSD and Out of Hours services seem to attract ex doctor’s receptionists and matrons who have spent their working life snapping at the smaller fish. Put them in a bigger pond though… ”
Excuse me but we only snap at people when they’re rude to us - but if you’d like to sit my side of the desk and see for yourself………
…..try having a druggie threaten to strangle you over the reception desk and see if that puts a crimp on your day!
OK - rant over!!!! :0)
Doctors’ receptionists and NHSD people are mostly lovely, but when they are bad, they are really really bad, and the bad ones always seem to be bad in the same way - snappy, disagreeable jobsworths who think their purpose in life is to be obstructive.
I know this because I used to work in a GP surgery!
“when they are bad, they are really really bad, and the bad ones always seem to be bad in the same way - snappy, disagreeable jobsworths who think their purpose in life is to be obstructive.”
You DO have a point with that one…..we have one receptionist that we have banned from being on the desk becasue she used to get so snappy with patients.
My dr’s got two receptionists. One is quite normal. The other one’s got some sort of hitler syndrome and goes out of her way to fuck you around, even at the risk of losing her job. Barmy.
I’m from NHSD and I’m lovely
There are problems with various ambo control sites though. A lot of them ask for an incident number or call id, then get stroppy when we explain that we don’t get any of that till the very end of the call, Also had problems with one of the London Controls who accused me of being a hoax caller and demanding my full name, phone number, extension, site, line manager and bra size! (well.. almost) Call taker then went off and discussed it with a supervisor while I tried desperately to not worry myself sick about the patient in question, and passed a note to someone next to me asking them to dial 999 for the police. Never want to repeat that again!
Elburto, which NHSD are you from? In London, we’re told to get a call id, site name and phone number from all our NHSD callers so we would be a bit suspicious of one who couldn’t provide any of these — nothing personal! All the London NHSDs have been told we need these and give them without asking, but I occasionally get calls from out of area where they seem to think I am a bit strange for asking!
I work in the North East. I think the problem is that NHSD used to be a lot of small, regional operations grouped together. It’s gone national very quickly, so there’s some catching up to be done. Those of us who’ve been there a while have previously been used to only dealing with one or two OOH services and NEAS (who incidentally used to ‘own’ the north-east NHSD site) and obviously procedure varies across the country. Caught me off guard about twice but now it’s normal for me. Anyway, we use a system called CSPT which is similar to the triage tool you use, but as our service was originally designed to *not* deal with 999 outcomes, the call ID is only generated at the end of the call when demographics are complete. If someone triggers a 999 dispo it’s usually very early into the call. The call I mentioned involved a suicidal 9 year old who was standing on a car in a multi-storey car-park adjoining the block of flats he lived in. He had a knife and was threatening to jump, and all I could hear were these horrific screams. You and I both know there’s a difference between a kid chucking a sickie or tantrum, and one who’s totally and utterly wretched. Apparently he’d gone to bed the night before normally, then spent the whole day leading up to the incident rocking in the corner of his room and threatening to kill anyone who came near him. Anyway, ambulance control lady just flat out refused to believe that a 9 year old could be in such a state, hence the reluctance to take me seriously. Anyway, luckily by the time I got control back on the line the police were on the scene and I transferred the call to them.
Hopefully now NHSD is a proper national organisation then there’ll be less of this and we’ll have standardised procedures. Surely something good has to come out of the last 18 months!
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