Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 8 October 2020 to Question 96968, what support experienced clinicians have provided to call handlers recruited to the NHS 111 covid-19 Response Service.
As with National Health Service 111 call handlers, there are clear and robust governance arrangements in place for call handlers working in the NHS 111 COVID-19 Response Service. If a clinical assessment is?required, the call is transferred to a clinician for full assessment. There are also clinical supervisors on hand to support call handlers should they need it.
In the first wave of COVID-19, all recruited call handlers received two full days of training. This included training on safeguarding, the referral and escalation process, and soft skills telephone training, as well as role play calls. Following this they undertook an assessment before commencing live call handling.