Volume 191 - Issue 11
Switched on
Author: Balakrishnan R Nair
Med J Aust 2009; 191 (11): 695. || doi: 10.5694/j.1326-5377.2009.tb03387.x
Published online: 7 December 2009
Published online: 7 December 2009
If you want a challenge, and need a laugh, try a day as a hospital switchboard operator!
The telephone switchboard is the nerve centre of the hospital, and the people working there are our unsung heroes. In my hospital, they handle at least 6000 calls a day, which is around 250 calls an hour. They work under extreme pressure, fielding questions and demands that range from the routine to the rude or the ridiculous. A sense of humour is an essential requirement to work there.
One caller, a doctor, asked to have me paged. When the operator said, “Yes, we will page him”, the caller replied, “Yes, thanks, on his pager please”. Apparently, when a particularly weird call came through, one operator was heard asking the other, “Is it a real person or a doctor?” Another caller asked to talk to a “doctor with some medical background”.
The major challenge is how to deal with distressed callers. For example, one woman rang to see whether she could talk to a doctor because she was getting palpitations and wanted to know whether it was menopause. A younger woman rang to ask what time the maternity delivery hours were! What about the young man who asked to be connected to a ward and, when told that the line was busy, said, “I want an answer from my grandmother whether she is alive or dead”.
Another caller enquired about his son who was brought in with a “Caesar”, while a young man rang to find out about his pregnant wife who was full term and had come to hospital to have a “seizure”.
The operator did not know where to forward the call from the young woman who was worried about dyeing her hair: “Could the dye seep over to the baby, since I’m 14 weeks pregnant?” What about the caller who wanted to know where to get spare parts for the baby? He was actually after a car “capsule” (baby seat) for his newborn.
Was the young couple who rang to be connected to the “infidelity” clinic trying to patch up their relationship? And where do you find the neon-natal ward? Maybe it is dark and not well signposted?
It must be hard sometimes to pick the comedians from those who are just too clever — many people ask for the “imagining department” (as I do when I look at MRI scans). Others want the “extensive care unit” (what a compliment to my ICU colleagues!), the “numerology department” (acalculia can be a consequence of stroke) or the “incompetence clinic” (incontinence is often an “incompetency” of dementia). How did the woman who rang to speak to the “neo-native intensive care unit” know that we have lots of foreign doctors?
When a caller asked to be put through to Ward D, the operator wanted to know whether it was “d” for dog or “b” for baby; the answer was, “They never told me”. When someone asked for Bob Reynolds and the operator wanted to know which ward he was in, the answer was, “I don’t know, but he will know” (even if Bob was demented?).
Then there was the woman who rang to speak to the crisis team in mental health. When the operator said the on-call person would be paged, the caller said she had paged someone 2 weeks ago and had not heard back! Another time, somebody wanted the registrar of the psychiatric crisis team and was given the number 53732. The response was, “Is this his name or pager?”
My favourite was the call from an anxious young man about his wife who was having labour pains. To try to calm him down, the concerned operator asked, “Is this her first baby?” His answer was, “This is her husband, you stupid?”
The switchboard operators have a tough job, but it has its moments!
Acknowledgements
My thanks and regards to the clever people at the switchboard.