Women will just keep on challenging you, won't they? I have a client, a lovely lady, who I really like.... but she can't seem to hear me when I tell her, over and over, the boundaries of my practice. One of my "rules" is non urgent contact should be via text, and in business hours. I have three children, and a partner, and a life outside of midwifery. So whilst obviously, I am on call 24/7 for urgent matters, like bleeding, or labour or unexplained pain etc etc, I ask all my ladies to save non urgent matters for business hours (10-4, Monday to Friday). I ask them to respect my other clients by sending a text, which I can then respond to after appointments, instead of having to answer a call (which should be urgent, because non urgent matters are dealt with by text!) in the middle of a consultation with someone else.
So this one client, who as I say is really lovely, has called me three evenings in two weeks: to ask for a letter, to ask when our next appointment is and to ask about a minor complaint of pregnancy. Since booking, I have had phone calls on at least three weekends, and twice during family functions: None of these were urgent. Now, I say again, I like the lady, but come on! Would you ring your doctor, dentist or lawyer on the weekend? I am now starting to get really frustrated by it... Every time she calls, she apologises for calling at the wrong time... so she knows it is the wrong time! Any suggestions for how I can make this clearer? Cause I am beginning to tear out my hair!
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Hey Trin,
It's a difficult one, and one that I think NZ midwives have created for themselves. I have one phone number that I request is used for all initial contacts, it has an answerphone on it and women are requested to leave a message for non urgent contacts, I tell women that I may not receive text messages and I don't respond to them....nothing worse than getting a text when you've been up all night and trying to sleep. The cellphone number is only available by calling the landline number, and to be honest I turn off the ringer on the landline too, then I decide when I want to respond to non urgent stuff.
It does make me mad that women expect you to be available at all times...the last women like this was "got rid of" at the earliest possiblity...three contacts a week for non-urgent stuff, always accompanied by "call me back, on my cellphone, by 3pm" or such like order...I eventually asked her to find another midwife.
I've printed stickers now for my notes that detail how to get in touch with me, I talk at the first appointment about how my family is important and that while I'm always available for urgent stuff they need to appreciate that I'm entitled to private time. I'd like to know when we'll see some extra money for all the cellphone calls we have to respond to (at our own cost) that have never been factored into our renumeration.
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