As an ICC Call Handler, you will be trained to be the first point of contact for patients, healthcare professionals and other stakeholders requiring either emergency/urgent care, planned transport, or medical advice. Handling calls into the service either through national 999 and 111 phone lines or from callers wanting to arrange non-emergency transportation. You will demonstrate excellent data entry skills, effective listening, and questioning skills, whilst remaining calm and empathetic. You will provide support and guidance for callers, triaging and signposting them to the correct service line where appropriate. You will be customer service and contact centre trained on the use of the telephony platform and other associated triage and clinical systems.
Key Duties and Responsibilities
- Excellent communication skills are essential for the patient assessment using critical thinking skills and supported by computer software to ensure the provision of a quality driven service.
- Liaising with other agencies and healthcare providers.
- Utilisation of acquired skills in the management of challenging calls and child and adult safeguarding concerns and referrals.
- To work co-operatively within the organisation, sharing and utilising areas of knowledge and skills to enhance patient care.
- To ensure appropriate and effective communication links with other departments, and other areas of the Trust
- To act if required in the support and mentorship of colleagues within the service, along with sharing best practice.
- Wherever feasible to deal with the call using critical thinking and probing questioning skills, supported by the software tools to transfer to appropriate care provider.
- To assess service user eligibility for emergency and non-emergency transport.
Person Specification
- Educated to GCSE standard or equivalent (one of which must be English), or in the absence of such, previous call handling/customer service experience.
- Keyboard / data entry skills.
- Competent and confident user of computer-based information systems.
- Demonstrable verbal & written communication skills.
- Ability to follow and interpret policy and procedures.
- Demonstrable effective listening, analytical and decision-making skills
- Ability to deal with queries from the public/patients in a tactful and appropriate manner, demonstrating empathy and compassion.
For more information see the full job description in the Additional Information section below
