Melissa richley
Receptionist/Administrator
As you’d probably guess, one of my main jobs as part of the Reception Team is to answer the phone when patients call.
Our phone lines open at 8.15am so we’re there primed for the first call, with all of our systems and appointment diaries ready. We need to make sure we know about anything happening that day – changes to normal services, or staff on leave – so we’re always giving you the right information.
First thing is the morning is always the busiest, especially after the weekend, so we always have at least 4 of us ready to take calls.
We try to answer every call as quickly as possible, but when it’s really busy or there is a time-sensitive task we need to follow up straight after a call, we can’t always get to everyone as quickly as we would like.
Even at ‘quieter’ times in the week, we still get hundreds of calls every day.
We know that our phone system hasn’t always worked as you or we would like, and we’re working on making sure it’s up to scratch. We have valued the feedback from patient’s perspective to help us sort out any issues.
Throughout the day as well as taking calls, we have a lot of associated tasks to complete like updating records, or sending reminders to our Admin and Clinical team.
Ticking off our To Do list with the phone ringing means we get pretty good at multi-tasking!
One thing we’re keen to remind patients of, is that there are ways to avoid having to call and risk the wait (especially on a Monday morning). Lots of our services are available online 24 hours a day including reordering prescriptions, health records and test results.
There’s information about all of these on the website, but we’ll be more than happy to talk you through any of them next time you call.