Phone Triage

[scrubsnhugsRN]

I work in a rural hospital, and administration requires me to do phone triage and document all my calls pt names etc....most people call in to tell me they are coming in...but you know I don't feel comfortable giving advice to a person I cannot assess...so I usually say if they think they are sick then they should come in. It is very frustrating because I know there isn't a doctor out there that would assess or treat a person over the phone and yet they make me do it...how ridiculous is this??

What is your take on phone triage from the ER??

[SDS_RN, RN]

We do pretty much the same thing. If they call in we take their info log it and then we either put their phone numbers in to their on call docs pager or call the doc and leave the pts name and phone number with them to call back. Depends on the docs preference how to recieve the message. We absolutly do not give advice out over the phone I tell them the same thing you do that if they think they need to be seen in the ED by a doc then they need to come in otherwise I can't instruct them on anything. Sometimes when they speak to their PCP then they instruct them to come in and if it's not that emergent they try to spare us and their patients a wasteful trip. For the most part it works out well.

[mianders, RN]

We were not allowed to give advice over the phone. I did the same thing tell them if they feel like they need to be seen in the EC to come in.

[CritterLover, BSN, RN]

if your facility is requiring you to do telephone triage, then it needs to have a policy/procedure for it.

phone triage is an accepted part of nursing, but it comes with straight-foward guidelines and protocols.

it would be completely impractical to do it in a large er or an urban setting. however, if you are working in a fairly small, rural setting, then it kind of makes sense.

i would think the sticking point would be the ability to document in the patient's record the phone call, what the complaint/symptoms were, and what they were told.

in a large community, this would be almost impossible since there would be no way to verify identity. but, it might be feasible in a small community.

and it would certainly be nice to be able to tell all of the "nausea, vomiting, diarrhea x1" patients to stay home and push fluids, and come in if they can't hold fluids down.

[LilgirlRN, ADN, RN]

Any facility I have ever worked in didn't allow us to give information over the phone, I tell them to call their doctor and if they feel they need to be seen by someone NOW, then come on down!