Switchboard play a vital role in the Trust – we see ourselves as the ‘hub’ of the hospital, taking 300-400 calls per hour with only two operators and taking calls well within the national average response time expected for hospitals. Not only do we offer a prompt and efficient switchboard service day to day, we also cover reception service out of hours, in the evenings and at weekends, giving the visiting public help, advice and guidance round the clock.
We have a constant stream of internal calls from staff wanting to know bleep numbers, extension numbers or be connected to outside lines, such as nursing homes, GP surgeries and patients, so as a department, there are not many things we don’t do or don’t know about!
We are a small friendly team that operate the switchboard 24/7, 365 days a year, come rain or shine we are always at the end of the phone to assist the public and staff.
The majority of the team members have been in switchboard for many years; currently we are a team of nine and have a total of more than 84 years’ experience between us. The team are extremely knowledgeable and can assist and help with almost every query that comes our way. We stay up to date with training and welcome change within the department or Trust; we constantly keep updated with procedures to ensure the smooth day to day running of a very busy department.
Recently one of our team assisted in the main outpatient department. A patient could not understand the nurse and doctor as they were deaf, our colleague knows sign language and was only too happy to assist and so the patient was extremely grateful and went away happy. The team is very committed to giving a first class telephone service and can often be found working through their lunch when the department is just too busy to stop or leave just one operator on duty.
