Blogs

Behind the scenes at our contact centre - meet Nicola, our patient advisor team leader

Nicola, our patient care advisor team leader, shares an insight into her role working in our Contact Centre.

I’m a patient care advisor team leader. I have worked for the trust for 20 years. I started in medical records in 2003 and then moved to the Contact Centre in 2005 as a patient care advisor.

I am one of 4 outpatient team leaders and we each oversea a different clinical speciality. We have 21 outpatient patient care advisors and every day in the contact centre we answer 950 calls, book 1500 appointments and process 350 referrals.

Calls can range from patients wishing to change appointments to GP’s following up referrals and more. We always try our best to help each caller and if we can’t we will direct them through to the relevant department or team.

There are currently over 60 staff working in the contact centre overseeing referrals, 2-week wait, hospital patients, outpatient, endoscopy appointments and referrals to treatment requests (RTT).

My speciality is trauma and orthopaedics. I have a team of 5 patient care advisors and they look after all of their clinics including spinal surgery, fracture clinics, orthopaedic podiatry, podiatric surgery and neurophysiology.

The team deals with all new referrals into trauma and orthopaedics as well as any follow-up appointments required. We aim to ensure urgent referrals are booked first and then we allocate appointments on the waiting list to try and keep waiting times to a minimum.

Daily the team monitor appointment requests including online forms such as clinic cancellations and additional clinic requests from departments.  They will action all requests for clinics that are available on our patient records system, PAS, for the next 6 weeks, by clinical priority and date. The biggest and most time-consuming task can be adding new clinics at short notice or last-minute cancellations as it's harder to reach patients at short notice.

In 2023 we started using Patient Portal, a secure online system for patients to access appointments including video consultations and information about their care. This can also be accessed on the NHS app.  We also use it to send text messages and emails to several patients at once to advise them of last-minute appointments or cancellations.  Patients can also message us on the patient portal to ask us to change or cancel their appointments.

After all the appointment requests are actioned we prioritise ensuring all free appointments are utilised. We collate twice-daily reports that show us availability (empty clinic slots) over the coming days so we can use them to prioritise bookings.

In addition, my team also take calls from the main contact centre patient telephone line and the 24-hour telephone line for referrals for termination of pregnancy also known as TOP line. We also take calls from a variety of healthcare professionals, patients, relatives and more. 

I really enjoy my job because I started in the contact centre on the orthopaedic team and now I am leading it.  I feel like I have a great relationship with the secretaries I work with and I enjoy helping them with their queries.  I also enjoy helping the staff in the contact centre and coaching new staff.