telephone triage flowsheet for receptionist?

[Ashley02]

I work in a small clinic setting where we mainly see adult patients. We hired a new receptionist who doesn't have telephone triage experience. I'm looking for some sort of flowsheet or a guide she can quickly refer to when patients call and want an appointment the same day. She doesn't get that everyone CAN'T be seen today just because they want to. Before I invent the wheel on this, I thought I'd check to see if anyone has used anything like this that I could use as well.

[TriciaJ, RN]

Receptionists should not be doing telephone triage. This requires the critical thinking skills of an RN.

[featherzRN, MSN]

Agree. We don't allow receptionists to do any triage at all - all 'sick calls' go to the RN.

[Ashley02]

Your RNs answer the phones?? No. The receptionist answers the phones. How does she know when to schedule appointments? She just puts everyone who calls on for the same day? It's not possible. How does she know who can wait until later in the week?

[WordWrangler]

Front desk will pass the call back to the RN's line. If the RN is busy (and I usually am) that call goes to VM and the RN will return the calls in order of priority. The VM prompts the caller with what info to leave for the nurse to return the call. From that point, the RN would return the call to get s/s and decide the need for an appt and how soon it would be needed.

[klone, MSN, RN]

I agree with the others. Receptionists should not be determining who should be seen same day and who can wait a few days.

How many same-day appts does your clinic have?

What I would do is have the receptionist tell people "if you think this is an emergency and you need to be seen today, you should go to the ED. Otherwise, I will take a message with your symptoms and have a nurse get back to you."

Then they can bring the written message to the nurse, who can decide if she needs to call the patient back and triage, or based on stated symptoms can tell reception to schedule patient that day, or later in the week.

[psu_213, BSN, RN]

My PCPs office starts all calls with a taped message--"If this is a medical emergency, please hang up and call 911." But, you are still asking non-medical individuals to determine if what they have is or is not an emergency.

The office nurse is the one who should determine if the person is "sick enough" to be seen today--or, if the patient is not sure if they have an emergent condition, the one to tell the pt. to go to the ED. It cannot be the job of unlicensed personnel to triage pts. (over the phone or in person). If the patient calls is with "I have XYZ going on, the receptionist needs to transfer the call to the nurse).