Mrs B was suddenly & unexpectedly deprived of her main work e-mail account yesterday, the one with all the other NHS staff on & which therefore recognises their names. She also has a social services e-mail account, but there's hardly anyone in the address book she needs to e-mail.
Because this happened via the disabling of her NHS user ID, she also lost access to all the clinical record keeping tools, etc.
A large number of other people are also affected.
This is because her trust is migrating accounts in the most incompetent, cocked-up, arse-over-tit way imaginable.
She rang the trust IT helldesk, & spoke to someone with an impenetrable (to her) Indian accent, an apparently poor command of English, who was in a very noisy room, & who had no knowledge of the different organisations whose e-mail & user accounts are subsumed under the trust IT. He kept asking her which hospital she worked for, & couldn't grasp the idea that there are people in the trust who aren't linked to hospitals.
This really deserves a full-on rant, but I'm now so used to the fuckwittery of NHS management that I'm too weary for that.