When I am about to make a phone call I pause. Sometimes I dial and sometimes I don’t. I don’t because I get the decided sense that now is not the time or the urgency of the call simply passes. What ever the prompt I follow it, for the most part. At other times I’ll find myself drawn as if by a magnet to phone somebody. Unplanned and with no apparent reason, I phone them. Quite often I’ll catch the person I’m calling at a really good time, which is always gratifying. Or perhaps that person was about to phone me! This method is not universally applicable nor 100% reliable.

So communicating by phone, even just the matter of to dial or not to dial is something of an art and a matter of divining if it is good to do. Calling for train times and other utilitarian reasons for using the phone is obviously straight forward. Or so one might think.

In hospitals for example there are many high value calls. Utilitarian ones. This is nurse X, patient B has moved to ward 67. Impacted Nurse, in his blog post Phone etiquette for medical staff there is advice on making and taking calls in hospitals. The basic etiquette can be applied anywhere.

I am proud to see that Ian of Impacted Nurse still lists Jade Mountains, under Non Medical.