Yesterday morning at 6:30 I was drinking my first coffee of the day and reading the Guardian when I got a phone call.
The screen showed “No Caller ID” which usually means someone is trying to get hold of the on call orthopaedic registrar. My direct dial hash number is very similar, and for years I’ve had many people ring me by mistake, and even the hospital operators put outside callers such as GPs through to me annoyingly often. I answered “Hello?” And a youthful female voice said “Is that the anaesthetist?” which confused me a great deal. “Well, I’m an anaesthetist…” I replied. It turns out she was looking for the on call orthopod, so I gave her the correct hash number, but I remained bemused about that conversation all day.
However, today it struck me what the story was. There must be a legend now amongst the junior doctors that sometimes when you try and get hold of someone on the phone to help you with a fracture, you end up getting an anaesthetist instead. A bit like trying to summon a devil and ending up with someone quite different, because you’ve mispronounced a word somewhere. Do you think that maybe changing my hash number after all these years might be helping more people than just myself?
