NHS 24 nurses endured ‘intense pressure’
Claim by former medic
NORMAL training for NHS 24 call handlers was abandoned when an expensive, faulty computer system was being tested, a former nurse claimed yesterday.
Patricia Pillar told the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) nurses had to work under intense pressure and cope with understaffing and an unreasonably high call-load around the time the Future Programme IT system was being developed.
She said it ‘had a material influence on patient safety’.
Former NHS 24 nurse Pillar, 50, faces being struck off after mishandling calls to the helpline.
She faces five charges concerning five patients who called between July 2010 and December 2013 – all of which she has accepted.
It is alleged she failed to use the
‘Unreasonably high level of calls’
out-of-hours helpline algorithm properly – denying patients the proper help.
At an NMC hearing in Edinburgh, Pillar told of the ‘intense pressure’ she experienced while working at the Clydebank contact centre.
She said the introduction of training for a new £117million IT system – which was withdrawn from service ten days after launching amid concerns over patient safety – meant previous, general one-to-one training effectively stopped.
She added: ‘When the programme was introduced, training was affected. There was very little, if any, training one-to-one. We were meant to have time off-line. But we were asked to do it at our desks in between calls, or in our own time.’
Pillar claimed there were ‘distractions’ from superiors. She said: ‘When NHS 24 started there was feedback about managers tapping people and sliding Post-it notes saying, “Can you take this call?”.
‘It said that was inappropriate. They tried to eliminate that, but then they would just stand behind you and you knew they were there.
‘There were always ways you could be interrupted. You were never ever left. I cannot remember if that happened in the incidents.’
Pillar, who estimated she took 5,000 calls a year at NHS 24, said: ‘While I do not want to deflect from my own culpability, the environment at work had a material influence on patient safety.
‘It was hard work, under the circumstances. There was a high level of sickness and absence. We were taking an unreasonably high level of calls – problems which have received media attention.
‘I admit to the charges against me. But I did not at any time lack concern or compassion for the patients I was advising. On each occasion, the incidents have caused me personal distress.’
Yusuf Segovia, representing the NMC, challenged Pillar’s suggestion she could have been distracted during the incidents.
He said: ‘There are many things you remember in each of the incidents.
‘If you had been distracted, that is something you would have remembered.’
Pillar said: ‘I never said there were any distractions in the calls, I said nurses were distracted.’
Mr Segovia said: ‘You say you made a mistake because of added pressure put on you by NHS 24. You do not mean that, do you?’
She replied: ‘I believe nurses are under intense pressure at NHS 24.’
The hearing continues.