A day in the life of a Medical Secretary

There are three secretaries supporting the practice during the period of 8.00am to 5.00pm, Monday to Friday.

The first job of the day is obviously making a lovely cup of coffee – only joking!! 

Our working day starts by collecting and stamping all the incoming mail that has been received and then distributing it to the various clinical teams within the practice.   

Our main responsibility is assisting the clinicians in creating referrals and advice and guidance requests from specialist consultants.  We are also responsible for producing a variety of correspondence to patients and consultants.  The referrals and advice and guidance requests are received in the form of a task or a dictation and can vary from urgent cancer referrals to weight management advice.   Once created, it is essential that we continue to monitor the referrals to ensure that they are not rejected and ensure that all advice and guidance is brought to the attention of the appropriate clinician.

We are also available to assist patients regarding new and ongoing referrals and answer any queries that they may have. We also liaise daily with all our colleagues, assisting them in any way we can and provide a full secretarial service to the practice. 

Another of our responsibilities is ensuring all emails received into the secretary’s office from outside agencies are actioned.

Our role also involves producing medical reports and Information to various organisations, for example, solicitors, social services, insurance companies and DVLA, to name but a few, on behalf of patients.

Our day is extremely busy but very satisfying.  There is a lot of pressure involved with our role but there is also a lot of reward, none so more as to when we receive positive feedback from patients.

Recently, we have all been assisting patients at the COVID clinics that have been organised by the practice.

We all feel very proud to be part of this team.