When call handler Julie Dyckhoff picks up the phone, she doesn’t know who or what to expect – but she is ready for every scenario with a calm, professional approach, and a sympathetic ear.
Working as part of the Clinical Administrative Team, she provides vital administrative support to the charity’s clinical teams, ensuring smooth operations behind the scenes. Her crucial role at hospice charity ellenor means she is very often someone’s first point of contact. Mostly she is helping callers with routine enquiries and making appointments for one of ellenor’s many services, anything from a meeting with a nurse to bereavement counselling. However, she could also find herself speaking reassuringly to someone who fears their loved one is dying.
“It’s a job with a lot of responsibility,” she said, “but I feel like I know the job well and I just get on with it. If I’m on the phone with someone who is scared or upset, I don’t want to frighten them further – sometimes you just have to take a breath. If I’m not sure there are always plenty of people to ask. I’m used to this sort of role, and you learn new things bit by bit. I’ve always needed to work with people. My previous experience in the NHS and within the teaching system taught me a lot over the years.
“The calls come straight through to us. Sometimes it can be a patient needing medication or they might want to speak to a nurse. The nurses are in the same room as us so sometimes we can put the caller straight through, or we take their contact details and put them on the system so that a nurse can call them back. It’s so nice working with the nurses. We can go to them and ask for advice if we are not sure how to direct a patient. Obviously, we can’t make clinical decisions.”
Very often Julie and her colleagues receive calls about Hospice at Home care, or it could be an issue for the children’s team, or from a care home needing support for a resident. Their phones are answered every weekday from nine to five, and in the evening and at weekends the calls go directly to the hospice ward in Northfleet or the nursing teams.
Julie said: “Someone might call in asking for a duty nurse from the Hospice at Home team, so we can make a note on the patient notes which will flag it as urgent. Sometimes it might be a paramedic who is calling.”
As well as being a call handler, Julie acts as an admin assistant answering generic emails and logging important information, for instance alerts from the ambulance service, which need to be logged on the system at ellenor. She writes letters for doctors, deals with blood results, adds notes onto the system from befrienders and sends crisis medication requests.
