title: Out-of-hours special patient notes.
abstract: In 2011, an out-of-hours service in central London reviewed its system for special patient notes (SPNs) - a main mechanism to communicate valuable information about patients to the clinicians who cover two-thirds of the week when day-time general practices are closed. This revealed that: half of frequent callers did not have an SPNabout half of existing SPNs were out of dateday-time general practitioners (GPs) respond well to requests by out-of-hours doctors to provide an SPNproviding SPNs was low on the list of priorities of day-time GPs who were too busy reacting to everyday problems.
authors.affiliation: London Central & West Unscheduled Care Collaborative, St Charles Centre for Health and Wellbeing, London, UK.
authors.forename: Victoria
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Holt
authors.affiliation: London Central & West Unscheduled Care Collaborative, St Charles Centre for Health and Wellbeing, London, UK.
authors.forename: Dan
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Bernstein
authors.affiliation: London Central & West Unscheduled Care Collaborative, St Charles Centre for Health and Wellbeing, London, UK.
authors.forename: Adam
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Jones
authors.affiliation: London Central & West Unscheduled Care Collaborative, St Charles Centre for Health and Wellbeing, London, UK.
authors.forename: Catherine
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Millington-Sanders
authors.affiliation: London Central & West Unscheduled Care Collaborative, St Charles Centre for Health and Wellbeing, London, UK.
authors.forename: Georgina
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Ormerod
keywords: unscheduled care; vulnerable patients; whole-system communication