Sometimes Lorna Grinnell-Moore, a nurse in Birmingham, gets the phone slammed down on her. Often, she has to listen to the most outlandish conspiracy theories and, on one occasion, she recalls being verbally abused.
“There’s always going to be ones like that, who just don’t want to hear, and you feel you’ve failed.”
But this is all part of the day job for Lorna. She’s been calling families whose children have missed out on measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccinations to persuade them to get immunised. Low vaccination rates mean the disease has been able to spread in the city, mainly among children under 10 years old.
Lorna’s been here before – she was part of a team of NHS workers that made 13,000 calls in just three months after a surge in measles cases in late 2023 affected hundreds of children. These conversations alone led nearly 1,000 previously hesitant parents and young people to take up the offer of vaccination.
In north London, which is in the midst of a measles outbreak, officials are looking to places like Birmingham for ways to get a grip on it. Fifty cases have been confirmed so far this year in north London, mainly among young children, some of whom have been admitted to hospital.
During Birmingham’s 2023 outbreak, some former doctors and nurses were brought out of retirement, like they had been in the pandemic. This time though, instead of administering jabs, they were being deployed to persuade people to have them.
The team was tasked with making repeated calls to parents and patients up to the age of 25 to discuss what was stopping them getting the vaccine against a disease that can have serious consequences – including meningitis, blindness and, on rare occasions, death.
Now, Lorna, clinical service lead for vaccination, and a team of nurses have been recruited to bash the phones again as measles cases rise once more.
It’s not an easy task. It takes a certain kind of approach which combines listening closely and trying to understand the person on the other end of the line.
“Once I get a handle on where they’re coming from, I can then answer their questions,” says Lorna. “Sometimes they listen, and sometimes they say they’ve had enough.
“It’s not about being the bossy matron.”
If people are prepared to carry on talking to Lorna, she feels she can then address their fears or worries about the vaccine and help diminish them.
The rule is to call only three times. Another is not to leave messages in case they can’t be understood. Colleagues who speak a number of different languages, including French, Italian, Arabic and Urdu, can help with making calls when English isn’t a person’s first language.
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