From the consulting room: a rant about email
Cheshire GP Dr Neil Paul uses his latest column to let off steam about email, attachments and version control – and to call for better training in how to manage all three.
I was recently enraged by an email. It clearly stated that it should not be shown to staff who did not need to see it, yet it had been sent to every member of staff in our primary care trust.
When challenged, the sender said this was the easiest way of passing on information. I tried to argue that it wasn’t, as everybody just ignored this kind of mass message.
What was even more annoying was that while I replied to the sender directly, others used the ‘reply to all’ button and so included everybody in their complaints about receiving unsolicited emails!
Email is driving me insane
The sheer number of pointless emails drives me insane. I have set up rules to auto-delete things from certain individuals, in the knowledge – or hope – that they will never send anything useful."Others used the ‘reply to all’ button and so included everybody in their complaints about receiving unsolicited emails!"
I know some of my partners never open Outlook because of the problem. Unfortunately, this means I can’t email them and have to find a different way to communicate with them.
To try and overcome this, we recently had the bright idea of creating rules in their Outlook clients so that emails from the practice manager and partners moved into a special folder and were highlighted. This works; but it is a pain to set up on multiple clients.
In any case, we have too many inboxes to check. Every day I check my Outlook email, my Emis email, my Emis practice notes, my Docman letters, my incoming pathology results, prescription requests and GP2GP transfers.
At my wife’s practice, they decided to deactivate Emis email, but when I suggested it at my practice I was almost lynched - such is the hatred of the rubbish that comes via Outlook.
But attachments are even worse
Then there are attachments, which are a pain. Opening multiple attachments is tedious. You can rarely tell what they are, because they are poorly titled. And when you get them open, they are often just a Word document that could have been cut and pasted into the body of the email. Why can’t the preview pane preview attachments?
Some attachments are worth keeping and here again I have problems. Unlike a friend who saves every attachment in a custom folder structure of her own devising, I don’t delete the original email. "Our chief executive’s PA has obviously been on the right course..."
However, finding it again can be another pain, as the search function never seems to find the one I want - and our IT department won’t let me install Google or Microsoft desktop search. I have heard of third party applications that help to manage attachments - however we can’t install non-standard software, so we are trapped by the limitations of what is available.
Version tracking is another issue. We have had problems with different people using different versions of a document to apply for things. Here, I admit, we probably don’t use the PCT Intranet enough, as you can send links to a central document that can be kept up to date.
The problem is probably lack of training. Our chief executive’s PA has obviously been on the right course as agendas for PEC meetings come in one Adobe PDF file with active hyperlinks to other documents on the PCT Intranet.
Does business do it better?
Rather than choosing which emails to delete, I wonder if it would be better to choose which to keep and have the default that they auto destruct. Emails could have their priorities set by the sender and any that are trivial could auto-delete after a month - although I suppose this is open to abuse by people who feel everything they send is important.
I have this view that a “real” business would be much better at handling email. This is probably a fantasy; I met a drug rep recently who told me her laptop was away being fixed for two weeks and she had no way of checking her email at all.
However, I worry that the NHS doesn't invest enough time in training people to deal with email, as I am sure that most of our problems could be solved if people only had the latest software and knew how to use all its advanced functions properly.
One last thought. At the moment, we are using Outlook with an Exchange server and I wonder whether NHSmail would be better or worse. I would welcome any comments on your experiences.
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About the author: Dr Neil Paul is a full time GP working at the Ashfields primary care centre in Sandbach. He has just been appointed to his primary care trust’s professional executive committee and has a lead role for IM&T and Payment by Results.
Tags: Ashfields primary care centre, attachment, cheshire, column, Dr Neil Paul, email, Exchange, GP, NHSmail, Outlook, practice, spam, training