• Edd Maclean, Rahul Ghelani, Myra Adra, Anshu Arora, Prasheena Naran, Heather Illing, Megan Knight, Sophie Banerjee, Sam Myers, Joanna Brecher, Sarah Anderson, Charlotte Aylward, Harmit Bindra, Christine Carter, Naim Dib, Laura Ganis, David Saliu, Andrew Towler-Tinlin, Doaa Rajab Kerwat, Eleanor Richards, James Noble Johnston, and Barney Low.
• William Harvey Research Institute, Queen Mary University of London, London, UK and Barts Health NHS Trust, London, UK e.maclean@nhs.net.
• Clin Med (Lond). 2020 Sep 1; 20 (5): e160e162e160-e162.

AbstractAppropriate dissemination of information to the general public is a key component of the pandemic response. In 2018, recorded infection control advice messages were affixed to 30% of England's automated hospital switchboards during the seasonal influenza and norovirus outbreaks. As the majority of messages were mandatory for all callers, healthcare professionals using the hospital switchboard - including during time-critical emergencies - had their enquiries significantly delayed by these measures. Importantly, published analyses did not demonstrate an association between these messages and patient outcomes. As of May 2020, 85% of NHS trusts made use of infection control messages; on average, these delayed healthcare professionals by 59.4 seconds per call, but had no clear association with patient outcomes from COVID-19. An ongoing national switchboard quality improvement project seeks to establish a gold standard whereby healthcare professionals with urgent enquiries can press 'X' to skip past infection control messages and have their calls triaged immediately.© Royal College of Physicians 2020. All rights reserved.

31 keywords...

hide…