Posted by I never knew what I wanted to do when I left school. I learnt to type on a typewriter! I had passed all my secretarial exams RSA Keyboarding and RSA Audio Typing at a stage 3 level and with a distinction, so a secretarial role was where I was headed. Then one day my Grandad told me about a relative who was a medical secretary. What is a Medical Secretary, I asked. He told me that she worked for a consultant in Harley Street, London.
I looked into this as it sounded interesting and decided I was going to go down this path. I had already completed 2 years in the sixth form at school so found a Medical Secretary Diploma course in a college near me. I completed this course and during the holidays, I worked as a temporary Medical Secretary.
I got my first job as an A&C2 Medical Secretary in the Gastroenterology Department at Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospital. This was in 1993! At that point there was no 18 weeks RTT, no KPI’s for typing urgent and routine new and follow up letters, no digital dictation, there was not even email!
Letters were dictated via a dictaphone and I sat most of the day with headphones in typing letters. There were 3 very different consultants when it came to dictating letters. One Consultant saw about double the patients that the other two did but his letters were short and to the point. The second consultant saw his usual list of patients but his letters normally went onto a second page. Then there was the 3 consultant. They saw about 4-5 patients in a clinic and every new patient letter was between 4-5 pages long and a follow up patient was between 2-3 pages long! They normally dictated 2 tapes for these clinics. Do you type letters this long now?
Even then though, I always kept a record of patients who were sent off for diagnostic tests. I did not have an electronic solution or a spreadsheet, we just kept the physical notes and put a post it on the front. When the results came back which were on paper then, they were checked by the consultant and then I put them in the notes. I crossed off each one as they came in and once I had all of them I sent the notes back to medical records. What do you do now?
I had no idea if there was an Access policy then or not! I typed many a letter from one consultant to another for a different condition and took many calls to book appointments and change appointments.
If I think about things now, I can see that the third consultant’s patients could go on PIFU and that we were not achieving 18 week RTT as many patients would come back after 3-4 months with the results of the diagnostic tests. Although the clinician’s reviewed the results we did not do letters after them.
Has the role of a Medical Secretary changed that much in nearly 30 years? What are your thoughts?
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