On exactly 100% of the occasions that we have phoned NHS Direct for advice we have been told to take the patient to see a medical professional in person. Not really a very useful service in my experience.
I'm just saying.
Sunday, August 29, 2010
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2 comments:
If they weren't planning to replace it rather than abolish it totally, I'd be cheering the coalition on 100%...
JuliaM,
But what they're replacing it with makes some sense. They're going to hire reasonably well educated people, give them a couple of months training and screen out the simple stuff that you don't need nurses to deal with.
I used to write software for a call centre, and they had 3 levels of support, because about 80% of all calls could be categorised into half a dozen types of call.
Someone phoned up because their TV box stopped working, you tell them to hold down the button on the left, switch it off, wait 5 seconds, switch it on again, and see it it's OK. 9 times out of 10, it was OK. The other 1 in 10, you escalate up to level 2, where you get people who are a bit more skilled, and if they can't deal with it, level 3 which was full of skilled technicians.
You want these trained monkeys doing this for the NHS because it's more cost effective than someone turning up at A&E with a cut, a headache or a hangover.
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