Let's give 47 a little more time to see if he does what he says he will.
A local police force did just that. Cut the typists that type reports. Constables had to type their own stuff and couldn’t get on the street to arrest jerks.
I told DFO if they hired 1 assistant for every 3 biologists, it would be like getting 1.5 more biologists for every assistant they hired.
Probably because somebody convinced them that some sort of technology will solve that.
you mean like computers were supposed to make our work less time consuming and easier?
Do they even teach skills such as typing now (ok, data input). I watch my family doctor updating my file and it is painful. Half of my allotted 15 minutes is spent watching her hunt and peck on the keyboard. One of my specialists just writes notes. He sees 4 patients per hour, spends the entire 15 minutes with the patient, so roughly 24 per day on average. Providing the same time AND doing data entry would either reduce his visits by one third or put him into an 8 hour day. His office manager spends 1 hour per day typing his notes into the system in between the telephone and scheduling and finally about 30 minutes after closing. She recently became his business partner. What I am saying is that we need to re-invent the role of the secretary and pay them very well for their skills
While this is very true, the way that many gp/family medical offices run now is a centralized pool of "staff" who work for the clinic and are managed by an office manager. The Doctors, in some cases, have little or no influence on the quality or quantity of work that staff does. So I believe there is a trust issue there. Dr's want to ensure what they want written on a patients file is what ends up there, and sometimes maybe that means doing the job yourself, especially if you have to review all the files at the end of the day yourself for accuracy.
I find there are very few GPs around now but lots of family medical centres which are businesses set up to collect money for services rendered but not necessarily providing decent primary health care. Our local system has 4 or 5 in the office with two service windows: one of which is always closed. Expect to stand in front of the window for at least a couple of minutes whilst the residing worker finishes either a phone call or a conversation with the individual in the closed window next door. I realize there are exceptions but as the saying goes:" Its hard to get good help these days" And all the staff are graduates of an advanced course from Sheridan or the like. Rant off
I remember talk about computers way back - like '50s and '60s - speculating that we would have so much spare time on our hands we wouldn't know what to do with it.
It might be generational. Both of doctors do their appointments with a table in hand and don't seem to be very distracted by it. The good thing is prescriptions and requisitions are sent before you leave the office and you don't have a pharmacist staring at a scrawl saying 'what the hell is this'.
