[jesussaves]

I have been looking into doing telephone triage work. I noticed that most companies want a decent amount of experience, especially if you are planning to work from home. I am an RN with only one and a half years of med/surg experience and that was 3 years ago. (i've been home with my wonderful kids). i did very well in school and learn fast. do you think i have enough experience to function well at this type of job?
I'm also wondering about the nurses liablility in offering medical advice as directed from a computer program. For instance, if you follow the prompt from the program and it turns out to be a legal situation, you would be liable for the advice you gave, even if the program prompted it, correct? thanks so much everybody!

[Fonenurse]

Hi - in my experience, the more experience you have the better - and of a wide variety - medicine, surgery, home health, elderly medicine, paediatrics etc.

Where I worked the software guided me, but was an aide memoire rather than a decision making tool. It was my RN license on the line, and therefore all the decisions were mine, not a computer's.....

[lenawa]

I agree, the wider the experience, the better. I started doing tele-triage nursing 4 months ago and, wow, what a learning curve. I had 2 years of med-surg, then 3 years in the O.R. before taking this job and I was totally overwhelmed. I had never worked in pediatrics, the last time I saw chicken pox is when I had it 20 years ago and I have no OB background to help me when I'm asked 'is this real labour or just braxton hicks?'. The computer program is there to guide you. However, if decisions were only up to the computer, they could have and trained monkey doing this job. Nursing judgement is vital. As far as the work from home aspect, my company offers this but prefer 1 year experience with them first. This may seem unnecessary, but they do expect you to be fairly independent and after 4 months working full time, I am still at the charge nurse's desk 2-3 times/shift asking for guidance.

Hope this helps

L

[andrewsimon]

Yes, you both are right...