Avicenna did not have a phone

It's for you, doctor..

This is one of the great Leo Gordon's finest matrix lessons, which is saying something. It is also a near daily decision that I have to make at the hospital, on the wards and in theatre. You just want to be helpful and after all, what harm can it do to answer a phone? The matrix lesson references Dorothy Parker, and the quotation is not dissimilar to Ogden Nash's line: Middle age is when you're sitting at home on a Saturday when the telephone rings and you hope it isn't for you. Which is, rather pathetically, where I'm at - home and work - most of the time. 

 The list of awful possibilities is a long one. Leo provides some classics, I would emphasise my own pet hates: staff wanting to discuss their off duty; relatives wanting an update on someone who is not your patient; the labs raising a potentially important test result about someone whom you have never met or been involved in their care.

Part of the problem these days in the UK is that in many hospitals bleeps  have virtually been abandoned and random phone calls (and email) have filled that void. Bleeps are good, and it was my fellow consultants who began the trend to leave them in a drawer with the airily offered alternative of "just try my mobile", which doesn't get answered, usually. A good doctor makes themselves available if at all possible.

Which is not the same as answering an unattended telephone.