The Concerns of Competent Novices during a Mentoring Year

Table 2

Example of a thread of conversation (1st meeting).

Speaker	Speech
NG1	We want to ask a really dumb question.
M1	Good we like dumb questions.
NG1	When we are writing to hospital referring people, who do we refer the woman to? Like this woman has fibroids—who do you refer them to? We were told to refer but not who to.
M2	Do you mean who do I ring or where do I send a referral?
NG2	Where do we refer them to? Is it a particular doctor?
M1	You could ring the hospital and talk to a particular doctor. You could ring the hospital outpatients and ask what they prefer; they need to grade them anyway.
M2	When you write a referral begin the letter with “Dear Doctor, thank you for seeing…and then give the reason for the referral and the past and present history.”
M1	There may be a more personal way of doing it by ringing and talking to the doctor.
M2	It’s different if an acute thing.
M3	Is the woman term and do you want her seen within 48 hours but not urgently?
NG2	It is a 3 on the referral guidelines. I will ring outpatients.
M1	Good to get a pad to write it on and fax it so you keep a copy.
NG1	We were taught the format for writing the referrals but I just did not know about where or who to send it to so I’ll ring outpatients.