Virtual clinics are planned contacts by the Healthcare Professional Responsible for Care with a patient for the purposes of clinical consultation, advice and treatment planning. A virtual clinic can be delivered via phone and/or video and may also be referred to as a telephone contact, telemedicine, teleconference or videolink. (Source: ISD Scotland)
1. Arranging Telephone Interpreting (thebigword)
If appropriate, always consider the telephone interpreting service as your first option for non-complex appointments. It is much quicker and easier to arrange as no booking is required (on-demand service), and it also promotes anonymity as the telephone interpreters are very seldom Lothian-based.
24 hour access to telephone interpreting is provided by thebigword, a national supplier under a UK Government contract.
To access thebigword telephone service:
- Connect to the service 033 3344 9473
(or 0333 344 9470 to speak to an adviser, if you need to request a specific gender) - Enter access code and PIN codes as below: (please note Access Codes have changed as off 1st April 2020)
| 88 900 001# | All hospitals | NO PIN required |
| 88 900 002# | Community (Home visits, CPN, etc.) | NO PIN required |
| 88 900 003# | Opticians | NO PIN required |
| 88 900 004# | Dentists | PIN required – please use your Practice Code. If unknown, please use 0 |
| 88 900 005# | GPs | PIN required – please use your Practice Code. If unknown, please use 0 |
3 Enter the language code followed by #
| 702 | Albanian | 95 | French | 734 | Lingala | 757 | Somali |
| 91 | Amharic | 4 | German | 735 | Lithuanian | 1 | Spanish |
| 92 | Arabic | 993 | Greek | 97 | Mandarin | 998 | Swahili |
| 727 | Bahasa Indonesian | 738 | Gujarati | 533 | Mirpuri | 762 | Tagalog |
| 706 | Bengali | 994 | Hindi | 741 | Nepali | 729 | Tamil |
| 17 | Bosnian | 724 | Hungarian | 796 | Oromo | 992 | Thai |
| 707 | Bulgarian | 995 | Italian | 98 | Pashto | 773 | Tigrinya |
| 93 | Cantonese | 96 | Japanese | 5 | Polish | 764 | Turkish |
| 780 | Creole (Haitian) | 3 | Korean | 996 | Portuguese | 709 | Twi |
| 710 | Czech | 520 | Kurdish (Kurmanji) | 749 | Punjabi | 765 | Ukrainian |
| 713 | Dutch | 730 | Kurdish (Sorani) | 750 | Romanian | 999 | Urdu |
| 712 | Farsi (Afghan) | 731 | Kurdish (Bahdini) | 997 | Russian | 2 | Vietnamese |
| 94 | Farsi (Persian) | 733 | Latvian | 755 | Slovak | 0 | More Languages |
2. Setting Up a Three Way Interpreting Call (thebigword):
1. Call dedicated free-phone number 033 3344 9473.
2. Enter eight digit Access Code followed by the # key. Codes can be found above.
3. Enter PIN followed by the # key. More info can be found above.
4. Enter language code you require. List can be found above.
5. Once the translator/interpreter has joined the call, explain what that you are a healthcare professional and are about to phone the patient.
6. When you are ready to bring the patient onto the call press *1 and then dial the patients number.
7. When you have finished, you can press *2 to release the patient from the call.
8. Pressing *3 will redial the patients number.
3. NHS Near Me
As part of the ongoing support for services across Lothian, eHealth have a project team rolling out NHS Near Me. NHS Near Me provides patients with the opportunity to have an appointment through a video call. If you think your service would benefit from this then please visit the NHS Near Me Intranet page for more information and to download a request form.
NHS Near Me uses internet-based video consulting and is powered by Attend Anywhere technology.
Further information for patients can be found at https://www.nearme.scot.
Useful Resource: Remote Consulting
