Please Advise! new grad and telephone disease mgmt job

Rntr · May 30, 2011

Most of those type jobs want experience working with Med/surg or Icu or Er... you are lucky to get this job but you have your work cut out for you as you have no working experience.

good luck..

CeceleRN · Jun 11, 2011

Congratulations new grad. :)

To try and help you with your question....

I have a been an RN for 17 years and am Board Certified in Telephone triage and Ambulatory Care. I work in a Level III Urgent Care (which is a cross between ER and most Urgent Cares). I have also worked in Cardiac Rehab and Pulmonary Rehab. Prior to that I worked in Med/Surg and Women's Health. I wish I had a website like this when I first became a nurse. Would of been so helpful. This is my first post.

It is not impossible for you to start out in this job. Some telephone triage jobs have a step by step questionaire to read and ask for most everything people call for. You may do ok if this is very detailed and you ask your supervisor for any questions.. .

I do have to admit though, that this is one job I believe it helps greatly to have experience in many areas, especially ER or Urgent Care triage where you get to know what questions to ask, and to give you experience to what is considered minor, non-urgent, urgent or emergent.

So without experience, you may drive your superivisor crazy with many questions, but don't hesitate to ask them. In this job you will need to rely on your supervisor's experience greatly in the beginning.

Since this is a chronic condition telephone triage, you may get to know that condition very well through this experience. It may not be as complex as some other telephone triage positions that deal with many different ailments/concerns a pt may have.

You also may want to take a telephone triage course on your own.

My friend does telephone triage for hospice and she absolutely loves it. She has her headset on at home while receiving calls she is able to get things done around here house.

I wish you the best in your first job. Hope this helped.

Cecele RN

Rntr · Jun 11, 2011

Would you elaborate on where to find a telephone triage course? Thanks

amclark · Jul 19, 2011

Hi New Grad,

I am a stay at home mom with lots of past experience in the hospital. I would love to work for a company that has telephone triage for chronic conditions. People with chronic illnesses are the patient population I hold near and dear to my heart because of the severe challenges it creates in their everyday lives. I would really appreciate it if possible you could share with me the company you found that offers at home triage telephone help to this population. I am so excited to get started in this type of nursing so I can stay home with my son and work evenings and nights while he is asleep. I would also be interested in a day position if they had this to offer. Thanks so much for any information you could forward to me regarding what company has these opportunities.

KerenRN · Nov 22, 2011

It is not impossible for you to start out in this job. Some telephone triage jobs have a step by step questionaire to read and ask for most everything people call for. You may do ok if this is very detailed and you ask your supervisor for any questions.. .
I do have to admit though, that this is one job I believe it helps greatly to have experience in many areas, especially ER or Urgent Care triage where you get to know what questions to ask, and to give you experience to what is considered minor, non-urgent, urgent or emergent.
So without experience, you may drive your superivisor crazy with many questions, but don't hesitate to ask them. In this job you will need to rely on your supervisor's experience greatly in the beginning.

I have to disagree, at least to a certain extent, with this post. Even with a "step by step questionaire" a triage nurse absolutely must have both critical thinking skills and some sense of the nursing process. I have to believe that most nurses do not hone these skills while in school (I did not!). The protocols exist as a guide only; they do not always contain the exact answer to a question or concern. A person simply reading the screen, especially about areas in which they are not familiar, could not triage callers appropriately in many cases. Many of our new (but experienced) nurses at the call center I work for tend to read the information at first. I think it's natural in the beginning, until one can feel comfortable with the guidelines. The problem that is likely to occur with a recent nurse graduate is that they may not have the confidence needed to deviate from these guidelines. And at times that is absolutely appropriate (at least where I work). I may be overly excited after having recently attended a telephone triage conference, but telephone triage does require much more than knowing and reading protocols. I don't believe it can be performed to its highest function by a nurse without any practical experience.

Imei · Dec 7, 2011

I have to agree with KerenRN. While telephonic triage positions usually supply carefully vetted protocols that you can read, people themselves often present with symptoms that don't fit the protocols perfectly. That is where experience, combined with active use of the nursing process, comes into play. There have been a number of times where my gut "instinct", honed by using the nursing process in the clinical setting, led me to offer a triage step up the ladder to a course of action that happened to be more assertive and focused. In some cases, I get to hear about the outcomes of those choices, and in a recent case, was applauded by a PCP for having caught something that could have otherwise slipped through the cracks. Any software program or protocol book is only as good as the operator - the nurse applying the nursing process backed by clinical skills s/he has exercised time and time again.