This week (27 October – 2 November) is International Control Room Week, which celebrates the vital emergency services control room staff around the world. 

Everyday staff within our 111, 999, patient transport service (PTS) and other control rooms play a vital role in making sure we deliver life-saving care to our patients across the North West. 

Without these, we couldn’t respond to patient calls, prioritise the most serious, or dispatch them the right kind of care and treatment they needed. 

Asha is one of eight colleagues to start in a new role created within our call centres as duty senior clinician:

“Hi, I’m Asha. Before I started this role, I worked as a paramedic in Manchester, before moving to another as an urgent and emergency care advanced practitioner, from our Manchester Parkway control hub.

“You might be surprised to know just how much is done behind the scenes in our control and contact centres to ensure that patients are getting the help they need at the right time.

“There are teams performing telephone triage to make sure patients are safe, our dispatch colleagues not only ensure patients get their ambulances at the right time, but they also make sure our colleagues on the road are safe. 

“We also have lot of new roles starting, to help coordinate the contact centres together as one cohesive team. 

“As a Duty Senior Clinician, it’s my job to provide clinical leadership, decision-making and support to our various call handling staff while they’re responding to calls across our 999, 111 and PTS services. This is so that we can make sure the advice they’re giving to patients is safe and appropriate to their needs. 

“A big part of this is helping to assess our patient calls and prioritise which are the most serious and help escalate them where needed, so that patients get the right care for them as quickly as possible. It also means we’re making the right decisions and best use of our staff and resources. 

“The eight of us in this role provide 24/7 cover within our call centre at Middlebrook near Bolton.  

“Another major part of it is leading regular clinical ‘huddles’, which bring together key staff and managers across our different services and functions. 

“Together, we review how well we’re responding to calls, discuss any challenges or actions around patient safety, so that we can better respond to demand and pressures, and above all maintain high standards of patient care and safety. We also provide daily updates to our senior management team. 

“Collaboration is central to our role, and we work with various clinical, call handling, command, dispatch, and operational staff to make sure we all have the accurate clinical information. 

“We’re also responsible for managing ‘clinical flow’, which means ensuring patients across all categories of calls receive appropriate and timely care. Where necessary, we will enforce call blocking for inappropriate or repeat callers to 111 or 999, which helps us make sure we can respond quickly to those who genuinely need it. 

“While this role is still very new, I’m enjoying working with lots of different teams and learning from the experience they can add.” 

Visit our careers pages for more about working at NWAS.