A normal day

Work in GP land seems to be ramping up in intensity and days seem more draining than ever. Every day seems to be full and every day seems to go onto the urgent lists. I wanted to see what my normal day (roughly 8-6) would be like, not on duty or late (12-8), to see where my time seems to go in the day. It was totally random day, so I couldn't cherry pick a particular quiet or busy day.

Morning

I was scheduled to be supervising a Physician's Associate (PA) for the morning shift which actually meant I got 3 telephone slots blocked off. This is in lieu of discussion of any cases related to their patients, sign off any medications their patients need and potentially see some of their patients. This morning, I ended up discussing 3 such patients. I had 11 telephone consults and 3 e-consults which generated only 1 face to face appointment, not sure how that happened, must have been lucky? Once the patient contacts were done, it is time for admin. This morning I had 52 medications to sign off electronically, 9 pathology/radiology results to sort, only 1 document to action and 4 clerical tasks to complete. From this admin, I needed to call the hospital to talk to the radiology consultant to organise an MRI and also dictate a letter to orthopaedics for a referral. 

After the morning session, there is a clinical lunch meeting with the doctors, paramedics and PAs to discuss patients and any clinical issues, and discuss the practice referrals. After the meeting, it's straight back to the grind and the afternoon session starts.

Afternoon

I had slightly more telephone appointments in the afternoon - 12, as well as 4 e-consults. I was still supervising the PA so had a 4 patient discussions with them. I had generated 4 face to face consultations this afternoon from my previously consults. This time I had one dermatology referral to do and had to call radiology once again to request a CT scan for an abdomen. I had a crazy 88 medications to sign off, 10 clerical tasks to do, 5 pathology/radiology results to sort and 3 documents to action. I also had a private medical report to do.

Normally once that is all done, you would help on the joint list to help do some extra patient consults. However, today it appeared that the urgent joint list seems to be under control so didn't need my help. 

It may not seem that the patient contacts on this day seemed low, but I think that my PA supervision will have made it look lighter than it was. The biggest thing that surprised me was the amount of medication sign offs today, 140 medications in total today. I did seem to only get 4 documents to check via Docman, but I think it was an anomaly as I normally get a lot more. I will do one for a late session which generally feels that patient contacts seem to be off the charts as it mean's completing the surplus urgent list, stay tuned.

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