TY - JOUR T1 - Recorded infection control messages delay inter-professional communication but are not associated with COVID-19 prevalence or mortality: insights from a national switchboard analysis JF - Clinical Medicine JO - Clin Med SP - e160 LP - e162 DO - 10.7861/clinmed.2020-0438 VL - 20 IS - 5 AU - Edd Maclean AU - Rahul Ghelani AU - Myra Adra AU - Anshu Arora AU - Prasheena Naran AU - Heather Illing AU - Megan Knight AU - Sophie Banerjee AU - Sam Myers AU - Joanna Brecher AU - Sarah Anderson AU - Charlotte Aylward AU - Harmit Bindra AU - Christine Carter AU - Naim Dib AU - Laura Ganis AU - David Saliu AU - Andrew Towler-Tinlin AU - Doaa Rajab Kerwat AU - Eleanor Richards AU - James Noble Johnston AU - Barney Low Y1 - 2020/09/01 UR - http://www.rcpjournals.org/content/20/5/e160.abstract N2 - Appropriate dissemination of information to the general public is a key component of the pandemic response. In 2018, recorded infection control advice messages were affixed to 30% of England's automated hospital switchboards during the seasonal influenza and norovirus outbreaks. As the majority of messages were mandatory for all callers, healthcare professionals using the hospital switchboard – including during time-critical emergencies – had their enquiries significantly delayed by these measures. Importantly, published analyses did not demonstrate an association between these messages and patient outcomes. As of May 2020, 85% of NHS trusts made use of infection control messages; on average, these delayed healthcare professionals by 59.4 seconds per call, but had no clear association with patient outcomes from COVID-19. An ongoing national switchboard quality improvement project seeks to establish a gold standard whereby healthcare professionals with urgent enquiries can press ‘X’ to skip past infection control messages and have their calls triaged immediately. ER -