The team who answer 3000 calls at Raigmore Hospital every day - including Christmas Day
As you’re tucking into your festive fare, opening that last present or pinching ‘just one more chocolate before dinner’ this Christmas, a small but dedicated team at Raigmore Hospital will be working away as they do every day of the year.
As you’re tucking into your festive fare, opening that last present or pinching ‘just one more chocolate before dinner’ this Christmas, a small but dedicated team at Raigmore Hospital will be working away as they do every day of the year.
You won’t know them to see but everyone who has cause to call the hospital will have had contact with the women who staff the switchboard.
As a department they operate 24/7 so Christmas can be just like any other day for them but for those working they do try to still have a little bit of Christmas on the day.
Joan Connor has been working in switchboard for the past 14 years. Recently promoted to assistant telecoms supervisor, she is no longer on the rota but she has worked Christmas before.
She explained that three shifts are covered on the day: 7am-3pm and 3-11.30pm are covered by two people and the 11.30pm-7am shift by one person.
Joan said: “If you’re on the early shift it’s not too bad. You just have to make sure you have everything prepared on the day and you can have your Christmas dinner later on when you get home.
“One year the two of us who were working decided we’d do it differently and we ordered in a takeaway for our lunch. It took three hours to arrive and, as if that wasn’t bad enough, it tasted horrible! We didn’t do it again!”
Joan’s colleague Maggie Cowan has also been working on the hospital switchboard for the past 14 years and has worked on Christmas for the past six.
She said: “It’s just the way the rota falls. Someone has to be here, and you work your life around it.
“My Christmas is all planned this year though. It’s a big one as I’ll have grandkids staying and my mother is visiting so I’ll make sure everything is prepared and we can have our Christmas when I get home. Mind you, with the grandkids staying I’m sure we’ll all be up early anyway watching them open their presents!”
The hospital’s switchboard gets about 3,000 calls a day and although on Christmas it can sometimes be quieter it isn’t always the case and it can just be like any other day.
Maggie said: “It’s still a working hospital. Patients will be here and people will still want to find out how they are or speak to staff. I would say calls aren’t as ‘Merry Christmas’ as they used to be. Callers are all pleasant but it is very businesslike now.
“Most of the duty managers who are on over the festive period will pop in to say hello and see who is in. It’s nice to be remembered as sometimes because of where in the building we sometimes think we’ve been forgotten but the staff here are very generous and the department gets lots of gifts.”
The general consensus in the department is that the worst shift to work on Christmas Day is the 3-11.30pm one which this year falls to Kate Stewart.
Kate has been working on the switchboard for 10 years and it is clear that she loves her job.
She said: “I can have bad days like everyone else but I work with great people and I have a great job. I really like it here.
“My shift is considered one of the worst, as it’s too early to have your dinner, and it’s too early to go see anyone so I think my Christmas morning will be spent pottering about waiting to go into work.”
Kate explained that part of their role on the switchboard was to alert on-call teams to any of the alarms going off in the hospital.
She said: “As well as our standard patient and ward calls we deal with the fire calls which mean we’ve to ‘999’ the fire service and notify the hospital fire team. We also get notified of the alarms going off in the hospital which can include boiler alarms, medical gases, doors being breached at night and the 2222 medical emergency alarm for the hospital.
“We have a long list of people on call as obviously Christmas is a public holiday – this can include estates staff, duty managers, the press office, public health, and the on-call executive.
“You don’t like having to call people at Christmas or anytime out of hours to be honest but everyone is so nice about it. Particularly if you call them by mistake, the relief when they realise they’re not actually on call is apparent!
“It’s no different to any other day really. We work in a hospital; it doesn’t stop and neither do we.”