Telephone triage has revolutionised how patients are assessed and given fast and accurate access to the medical help and support they need. However, there will always be issues to overcome when conducting telephone triage with complex cases and callers.
When describing difficult calls, these can come from patients suffering from physical or emotional abuse, chronic health conditions that affect their ability to communicate clearly, or those with mental or psychosocial issues that make conversations challenging.
The types of difficult calls you may experience as a telephone triage nurse can include:
- Abuse and Neglect: Telephone triage nursing staff can receive calls from concerned family members where a child may be suffering from abuse or neglect. The information must be gathered to inform staff about anyone in immediate danger, especially if a child is involved.
- Callers Who Are Difficult to Understand: There may be occasions where callers are difficult to understand due to a language barrier, or the caller may be under the influence of drink or drugs that affect their ability to communicate clearly.
- Chronic Ailments and Repeat Callers: Telephone triage nurses may receive repeated calls from anxious patients that need extra reassurance that their medical needs are being addressed. Some patients with chronic ailments will call every time they notice a slight change in their condition, whether the difference is good or bad. Some acute callers will phone with the same concern within 24 hours of their last call.
- Excessively Anxious or Angry Callers: Callers that are upset, scared or overly tired can be challenging to deal with over the phone. Sometimes you are the only person they can lash out at when they feel confused or angry. On occasion, the caller can become abusive with their language towards you. Knowing how to calm down anxious callers to get the information you need to make an assessment is critical here.
- Medical and Psychosocial Concerns: Patients calling with minor or acute medical concerns risk unnecessarily taking up the time and attention of telephone triage nurses. Determining if the caller’s problems are chronic or need more urgent attention is essential here.
- Unauthorised Callers: Sometimes, a caller will ask about a patient with whom they have no family links or have not been given permission by the patient to access their personal health information. This can involve a family friend asking about a child’s health without first speaking directly with the child’s parents.
Telephone triage medical staff need to learn how to effectively communicate with callers with any number of issues and understand how to handle callers who may be excessively anxious, angry or worried about their condition.
Practitioner Development UK Ltd. offers a range of training courses and practical workshops for medical staff to help them brush up on their skills and learn new techniques to aid them in their work. We recommend the following online workshop for telephone triage staff such as HCAs and HCSWs.
AR85 Telephone triage for HCAs: Online
This workshop is aimed at helping telephone triage medical staff to develop a higher level of customer care by empowering them with the skills and knowledge they need to deal with telephone triage callers most safely and effectively.
This is a practical workshop with activities including listening to actual patient calls to determine how and when to apply the strategies learned in this workshop. Group exercises and discussions will be included to help further your knowledge.
The workshop has been created for HCAs and HCSWs, and the session will help you to:
- Demonstrate effective telephone communication
- Demonstrate the call process
- Identify and overcome some of the barriers to communication
- Learn to identify emergencies and to prioritise or signpost to the relevant team member
- Learn to identify challenging behaviours and how to manage them
- Review the basics of telephone interaction
- Understand the difference between aggression and assertiveness
This workshop and similar offerings by PDUK Ltd. help medical staff develop skills and knowledge to give patients more effective support and help improve their health outcomes.
