What Is Involved in Nurse Triage Over the Phone?
Triage nurses have a unique responsibility when it comes to providing patients with appropriate, accurate, and consistent advice over the phone. While they rely on Schmitt-Thompson protocols to generate dispositions for care, as well as nurse triage software for documenting those interactions, a lot more goes into their training and overall approach because they can’t physically see their callers. Below is a breakdown of what’s involved in nurse triage over the phone.
The 10 Critical Steps
Triage nurses use a framework of 10 Critical Steps in order to provide structure to a patient call and obtain the information they need in order to generate the most appropriate disposition for care. These steps include:
- Introducing themselves.
- Collecting patient demographic information.
- Getting the patient’s brief medical history.
- Getting a history of the patient’s current illness.
- Identifying the chief complaint and the most serious symptoms.
- Selecting the correct triage protocol based on the patient’s symptoms.
- Triaging the patient based on that protocol, and getting them the right disposition of care.
- Providing care advice.
- Giving clear and specific callback instructions (in case the patient needs further assistance).
- Wrapping up the call and making sure the patient has no other questions.
Nurse Behavior
Despite this framework, triage nurses must be mindful of other factors that can affect their dispositions for care over the phone. These can be internal, like a nurse’s preconceptions about a patient, or external, where a patient is being difficult out of anxiety or frustration. The following are behaviors that triage nurses must practice and apply to avoid undermining their work:
- Objectivity – Avoid stereotyping a patient based on their age, gender, or medical history.
- Listening Skills– Be attentive to all patient symptoms and medical history, as the root cause for the patient’s discomfort can vary based on many factors.
- Professional Judgment–Perform a full assessment in order to establish the correct disposition, rather than rely on a patient’s self-diagnosis.
- De-escalation Skills –Take caller symptoms seriously and present a reassuring demeanor in order to calm anxious or distraught patients.
Knowledge and training on both of these areas is key to a triage nurse’s ability to provide consistent, accurate, and appropriate advice to every patient over the phone. It’s what has allowed our clinical call center to provide exceptional 24/7 nurse triage on behalf of doctors’ offices, hospitals, and medical practices across the US. If you have questions about how to expand your own telephone nurse triage support, contact us to learn more.