Over 3,000 people have registered with the HSE’s national training programme, which was developed with support from RCSI.

Contact tracing occurs when the health service identifies who has been in close contact with a person who has been diagnosed with COVID-19. Tracing is vital in order to identify who is at risk of catching the virus so they can be provided with advice and encouraged to self-isolate in order to limit its spread.

From March to July 2020, the HSE established a network of contact tracing centres and developed a national training programme for contact tracers. RCSI supported this by quickly providing an e-learning platform to support nationwide online training and managed access to the platform.

The platform contained over 40 different educational resources, including scripts, scenarios and videos. These resources were viewed over 66,000 times. 

In a survey of active users, over 92% of respondents rated their overall satisfaction with the platform as excellent, very good or good. 

Dr Philip Crowley, HSE National Co-Lead Public Health Response to COVID-19 and National Director, National Quality Improvement Team, said: “Contact tracing is an essential part of our strategy to manage the pandemic and get Ireland back up and running. The support provided by RCSI ensured that the training provided to contact tracers was consistent, reliable and of the highest quality. On behalf of the HSE COVID-19 Contact Management Programme we would like to take this opportunity to express our sincere thanks and appreciation to all involved for your commitment and support over recent months. This is a fantastic achievement and a testament of strong collaboration and teamwork between the RCSI and HSE as part of the COVID-19 National response.”

Professor Cathal Kelly, RCSI CEO, congratulated all involved in the project: “As a health sciences university, RCSI has a particular responsibility to support Ireland’s national response to the pandemic. This initiative with the HSE is an example of the proactive and practical support we have provided over the last number of months and I want to thank the team involved for their dedication in making it a success.”