Practical. No hype.
Fifteen minutes. That’s genuinely all it takes to go from an account that produces generic answers to a setup that knows your role, your writing style, your patients, and how you prefer to work. Most people never do this. Most people get generic answers.
This post is the setup guide. Do this once and the difference is immediate.
What you need before you start
A Claude Pro account (around £19/month including UK VAT). Free gives you limited Project access — the feature this guide is built around — and you’ll hit usage caps quickly. If you’re not on Pro yet, this post breaks down whether it’s worth upgrading.
Three to four examples of your own writing — clinic letters, referral letters, emails to colleagues. You’ll use these to build your voice profile.
Fifteen minutes of uninterrupted time.
Step 1: Create your first Project (3 minutes)
In Claude, click on “Projects” in the left sidebar, then “New Project.” Name it something practical: “Clinical Correspondence” or “Admin & Writing.” This is the workspace where all your correspondence-related conversations will live.
You’re now inside the Project. You’ll see a “Project instructions” section at the top — this is the system prompt. Everything you put here applies to every conversation inside this Project, automatically, without you needing to repeat it.
Step 2: Write your system prompt (7 minutes)
The system prompt is the most important thing you’ll do in this setup. It tells Claude who you are, what you need, and how to behave by default. Copy the template below and fill in the brackets — it should take about five minutes to personalise.
You are assisting [Mr/Miss/Dr Name], a [grade] orthopaedic surgeon at [hospital name] with a subspecialty interest in [e.g. shoulder and elbow / trauma / arthroplasty]. You help with clinical correspondence, summarising guidelines and literature, drafting presentations, and preparing for governance meetings.
Writing style: [direct and concise / formal and precise — choose what fits]. Sentences are short. No hedging language. Clinical detail in the first paragraph. Patient letters should target a reading age of approximately 12 — clear, plain English, no jargon. Referral letters should lead with the clinical question, not the history.
Default behaviour: do not add unnecessary caveats. Do not recommend the patient seeks a second opinion unless I ask. Do not insert legal disclaimers. When drafting a letter or document, produce the full draft immediately — do not ask clarifying questions unless something critical is missing.
Adjust it to fit. The goal is specificity — a system prompt that could apply to any surgeon is not useful. Make it apply to you.
Step 3: Add your voice fingerprint (3 minutes)
Start a new conversation inside the Project. Paste in two or three of your existing letters and ask:
Read these examples of my writing and describe my style specifically: sentence length, formality, what I tend to avoid, any distinctive phrasing patterns. Be concise.
Read the response. Correct anything that’s wrong. Then add this description to your system prompt — either as a paragraph or appended to the writing style section.
From this point, Claude writes in your voice by default inside this Project. You don’t need to tell it again.
Step 4: Add reference documents (2 minutes)
Projects allow you to upload documents that Claude can reference in any conversation. Good candidates: your department’s referral template, a summary of your common patient indications, the NICE guideline most relevant to your practice, or a one-page briefing document about your clinical context.
To upload: inside the Project, look for the file attachment area in the instructions panel. Upload PDF or Word documents. Claude will be able to quote, summarise, and apply them in every conversation.
What this looks like in practice
After this setup, a typical interaction looks like: “Write a referral letter to physiotherapy for a 67-year-old with rotator cuff arthropathy — they’re not surgical, had two steroid injections without lasting benefit, and want to try PT before reconsidering.” Claude produces a full, ready-to-edit letter in your voice, leading with the clinical question, at the appropriate reading level, in about fifteen seconds. No preamble, no caveats, no “certainly!” — just the letter.
That’s the difference a fifteen-minute setup makes.
Next: Chat, Cowork, Code, Skills, Plugins, and Prompts — what is what and when to use each.
Want to do this together? If fifteen minutes of reading isn’t enough and you’d rather build this live, logged-in members can book a session — 30 minutes (£75) to get your first Project set up properly, or 60 minutes (£150) to build your full AI workspace from scratch and leave with something ready to use.
3 thoughts on “Setting up Claude properly: a 15-minute guide for surgeons”