how much experience for new hires

jadednurse · Feb 3, 2004

The company I work for (we do triage, health information and disease management) requires a minimum of 5 yrs of clinical nursing experience. Many of the nurses there have 8+ yrs of telephone triage experience. I had zero, but nearly 9 years of acute care experience, mostly critical care, and was hired at a higher starting salary than some of the experienced telephone triage nurses. HTH!

JACALA_CL · Feb 13, 2004

many hospitals require you to work in the er for a year first then you are sent to a triage course.

JACALA_CL · Feb 13, 2004

many hospitals require you to work in the er for a year first then you are sent to a triage course.

let me restate, if the telephone triage is run through a hospital they may require some er experince, there is a lost of preceptor work involved with new hires

Phantom2U · Feb 24, 2004

Our guidelines say they want people with at least 5 years of varied experience. No mention of ER.

Now, having said that I can say with certainty that some are hired with as little as one years nursing experience total. The reality is, just like all of nursing, when you come in they will teach you what you need to know.

Shotzie · Feb 27, 2004

This is one of those jobs that clearly needs to be done by nurses with A LOT of experience.

Every nurse I have hired has more than 10 years of experience. Most have ER experience. I strongly feel this is not about just following the questions in the quidelines, it's about how to ask questions "around" the guidelines.

For example: A mom of a child calls in with complaints that her 5 year old has fever 102.8 oral, sore throat, headache and fatigue. You can ask simple questions and get a dispostiton of "see in 24 hours" based on possible strep vs. viral infection, or you can ask extended questions a reveal that this child has possible meningitis and send them to the ER now.

A lot of this has to do with the experience of the nurse.

Shed13911 · Mar 4, 2004

I have been on the pedi triage call team now for 11 months. I have been a nurse for 25 years before I started here but had no triage or ER experience. I had done OB before though and had done some triage type calls when you have pregnant women call wanting to know what to do when they had symptoms. I look at triage as being a good medical detective. As a nurse, you have to know how to phrase the questions to the patient so that you get a full picture of what is going on with their health. I had less than 3 weeks of orientation before being set free. However, I always had someone nearby when I had a question or problem that I had not come across before. I love the work and find it very exciting and am amazed at some of the calls we get. It is a fun place to work when you work with a great group of nurses. :)

movealong · Mar 7, 2004

I didn't have ER experience when I started telephone triage, but I had a varied background in lots of depts and that helps. I also had alot of years of nursing experience. I think the first triage center I worked for, the nurses averaged between 10-15 years experience. but we had some with much less.

I believe at my current position, most nurses have had 10 years experience and have done some toye of triage before.