You can organise your practice so that your staff are immediately available and will answer calls and reply to messages promptly, but it is OK to have a delayed response from you – batch it.

Protect your time so that you are not constantly interrupted with queries.

Let your team know that you will get back to them at 4pm on a Thursday (or whenever).

Look at your practice as a business and the business should get back to patients straight away and aim for giving a great service in that regard.

…but that doesn’t mean that you have to be constantly available.

Separate yourself from the business and make your team immediately available, but not yourself.

This is an important distinction.