One of our consultants stepped away from her Devonshire Place clinic for two weeks in June and took the family to Puglia. Proper leave. Phone in the villa safe, out of office actually switched on.

The practice didn't pause. Before she left, she'd sat down with her PA for twenty minutes and built a handover brief. What could be booked without asking her. Which patients needed a call to her mobile. What could simply wait.

She came back to a full clinic list, an empty backlog and one flagged message. Twenty minutes of planning bought her fourteen days of genuine holiday.

The bit most people skip

Most handover briefs fail for the same reason. They cover what to do and say nothing about what not to do. So everything feels urgent, and your PA ends up ringing you at the pool just to be safe.

The good ones fit on one page and answer three questions:

The decisions list. What your PA can book, move, confirm or chase without asking.

The waiting pile. What genuinely holds until you're back, and where it lives.

The escalation line. The short list of things that do interrupt your holiday, and exactly how to reach you.

Hand it to your medical PA

If you've got leave booked this summer, don't write the brief yourself. Ask your MPM PA to draft it. They already know your patterns, your regulars and your pinch points. You'll spend twenty minutes correcting it rather than an evening creating it

Why this letter exists

This is the first issue of Between Patients. Once a month, a short letter about the work that happens around the clinic room rather than in it. Real stories from real practices, one useful idea, nothing salesy. If there's something you'd like me to write about, reply and tell me.