Hospital and Telephone Triage Course (2024)

FAQs

Is telephone triage difficult? ›

As a telephone triage nurse, you can never be too prepared. You need to have a strong knowledge of medical conditions, treatment modalities, and the ability to stay calm under pressure.

Critical thinking is one of the most highly-prized skills, it is also difficult to initially assess and very difficult to teach. Telephone triage requires the ability to listen, assimilate, collate and prioritise many pieces of information. It involves common sense mixed with the ability to think on your feet.

Poor communication due to lack of engagement with the patient. Time constraints – this may lead to an untimely conclusion; lack of information gathering; inappropriate outcomes; and poor interaction. Patient perception that telephone triage reduces their access to care.

Probing questions help triage nurses to gain more information about the responses given to previous questions, whether closed or open-ended. “Where are you bleeding,” “when did the headache first manifest,” and “can you tell me more about the fall” are all examples of probing questions.

The most common triage system in the United States is the START (simple triage and rapid treatment) triage system. This algorithm is utilized for patients above the age of 8 years. Using this algorithm, triage status is intended to be calculated in less than 60 seconds.

Listening skills (hearing and identifying the most important details) are vital to the triage process. The art of telephone triage is a combination of the science of nursing and trained listening skills.

Triage nurse qualities

They must have expert critical thinking skills and the ability to reason systematically and logically. Empathy, essential to telephone triage nursing, requires that nurses demonstrate understanding, patience, and compassion, and that they offer education and reassurance without judgment.

Being a good telephone triage nurse requires you to be committed to patient care and constantly be alert. Good Listeners : Since the only information a triage nurse gets is verbal communication from the patient or their caregiver, they need to be able to listen carefully to what is being said.

Mary Ann Shea, JD, RN, a St. Louis-based legal nurse consultant, says, "Lawsuits alleging negligent triage arise when the nurse fails to identify and act upon an emergency condition in a timely manner.

How accurate is telephone triage? ›

Conclusions: The semi-automatic triage NTS tool underestimated the urgency in 27% of patients with ACS/other LTEs. Overruling by triage nurses improved safety, but still 14% of men and women with ACS/other LTEs received too low urgency, while efficiency remained poor.

The description: “Telephone triage is a component of telephone nursing practice that focuses on assessment, prioritization, and referral to the appropriate level of care.” It's defined as “an interactive process between nursing and client that occurs over the telephone and involves identifying the nature and urgency of ...

Evaluate patients at the triage room. Prioritise patients in the most serious situation for examination. Give pain control without delay in accordance with the scale of pain. Patients should wait no more than one hour to see a doctor.

The purpose of triage is to identify patients needing immediate resuscitation; to assign patients to a predesignated patient care area, thereby prioritizing their care; and to initiate diagnostic/therapeutic measures as appropriate. The term triage originated from the French verb trier which means to sort.

The triage questionnaire is aimed at Receptionists who take patient information prior to booking an appointment. Some practices do this so that the patient is directed to the most suitable clinician. It can be located on the Reception and Admin template.

You are the first point of contact when a patient enters the ER, and your role as the triage nurse is to determine the urgency of those in the waiting room. This can be a stressful position to be in, and understandably so.