In conversation with: our patient transport service teams
In 2023/24 our patient transport service completed more than 542,000 planned and unplanned patient journeys across the North East. Throughout January, we spoke to colleagues working on the road and behind the scenes to understand more about their roles.
Call handling: Barry
Having joined NEAS in 2014 following a career in the oil and gas industry, Barry Cox is an ambulance liaison assistant in the call handling team. He and his colleagues are responsible for taking patient transport service bookings and ensuring patients receive the right kind of transport to their appointments across the region.
“We take calls from hospitals, GPs, and patients to arrange their transport to appointments and answer their queries about the service they’ll receive. My favourite part of the role is all of the problem solving. We often have to decipher complex booking requests from the hospitals that require a logical thought process, and we also have to have excellent geographical knowledge to keep patients and hospitals abreast of logistical and operational queries.”
Operations manager: Amy
For many patients, regular transport from our service is a must in order to get to and from their appointments. They may have mobility needs such as use of a wheelchair, or be unable to drive. The team needs to identify when these patients will need our service and, if required, pass this information on to a team manager who will conduct a patient assessment.
Amy Rosindale began her career at NEAS in 2007 as part of our patient transport service call handling team and has since risen through the ranks of the service, spending time in our dispatch and team manager teams before being appointed her current operations manager role in 2022m where she oversees her team of managers who conduct patient assessments.
She said: “We do patient assessments in advance of appointments so that we can make sure the right crew and vehicle is arranged to help our patients get to appointments as smoothly as possible. A member of our team will come out to a patient’s home and see what challenges a crew could face to make sure our planners are able to work around things like tight corners, ramps, or lots of stairs.”
Dispatch: Claire
Our dispatch team is responsible for making sure each crew can get to each patient throughout their shift, often managing last-minute changes to appointments, care plans, and types of transport needed.
Working over seven desks in our emergency operations centre in Newcastle, our dispatchers oversee more than 2,500 journeys per day to the region’s GP practices, urgent care centres, and hospitals.
Overseeing them is dispatch supervisor Claire Glister.
“Patient transport is the backbone of the service,” she said. “We all work hard, and the work we do helps the crews out there who are responding to emergencies.
“It’s a side of the service that people don’t see, but dispatch is vital in making sure that the ambulance you request, emergency or scheduled, gets to you.
“You do a lot of juggling in this role because things change. Appointments are cancelled, crews show up to a patient home and the type of transport they need has changed, and then you have our patients with additional needs such as travelling alone because they’re vulnerable to illnesses that they could catch from other patients.
“Our planning team does an incredible job of assigning patients to crews, but life in healthcare throws curveballs and it’s up to us to make sure that no curveball is too much to get the patient the care that they need.
“We also have a responsibility to our crews to make sure that they’re getting the breaks they need, and support for any patients who may be more challenging to respond to. All this needs to be factored in when I’m making changes to jobs; it’s not just about who is closest to a patient, but who has the right skills and equipment to make that patients journey the most comfortable.
“It’s a challenging job, but I go home knowing I’ve made a difference. It’s something I’m very proud of and proud to be a part of, just knowing that someone was able to get the care they needed because of the work of me and my team. We’re a small part of a big jigsaw, but we’re important.”
Ambulance crew: Chris
Chris Cooper swapped the world of business for a completely new role out on the road when he joined NEAS as an integrated care assistant in February 2024.
“A lot of people, when they think about the ambulance service, they think about the yellow vehicles that are driving around all over the place, often with their blue lights on going in and out of hospitals,” he said, “But an important part of our role is in scheduled non-urgent care.
“I get to help people who really need the help. Some of them are in quite desperate situations; some of them it’s an inconvenience because they can’t get to hospital and just need transport to get to hospital so that appointment can take place, and it’s great to be able to do that.
“No two days are ever quite the same. The patients are all different and all have different needs. There’s challenges around access and mobility and some people are very reticent about using the service, it might be the first time they’ve used it, so it’s overcoming that fear with them and taking them through their journey.”
More information about our patient transport service, what to expect when you make a booking, how to travel safely and comfortably, and how to cancel your booking, can be found on our website: https://www.neas.nhs.uk/your-service/patient-transport-service