Telephone Triage - More Than Just Friednly Advice

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Registered Nurses trained in http://www.callcarenet.com/products-nursecare.asp
telephone triage are exceptional health care providers. Many health care services offer around-the-clock telephone support. It ranges from simple health advice hotlines to full-blown diagnostic assessment. Telephone triage falls into the later category. Rather than providing answers to general health questions, the telephone triage nurse has been trained to assess a callers health condition without any physical examination.

In many cases the cause of a patients concern is obvious high fever, a non-life threatening injury. But at other times, the cause for concern is masked by a number of overlapping symptoms. In order to be able to conduct effective telephone triage a nurse must rely on a unique skill set that takes into account a keen ear for detail, an extensive knowledge of how diseases and other ailments present themselves through a broad age range of patients and the ability to communicate in such a way at to create trust and credibility with the public. It takes a special, highly trained person to excel in this vital healthcare profession.

Sometimes a correct diagnosis through telephone triage will be able keep someone from making an unnecessary trip to the emergency room. Sometimes it will mean the difference between life and death. But it has not always been easy to get people to see the advantage of this specialized branch of the health care industry. It was hard for people to believe that someone could effectively make assessments as to severity of a health issue and then suggest an appropriate care response without making a thorough physical examination. Even if the nurse had a thick manual to refer to the time it would take to cross-reference data might end up causing more anxiety and distrust that if the patient just went to the local emergency room. But all that would change when telephone triage entered the computer age.

The computer revolution changed how telephone triage worked.Taking advantage of sophisticated computer programs loaded with numerous interlaced medical diagnostic problem-solving procedures, the telephone triage nurse is able to discern a pathway that leads to solid diagnosis.The process is something akin to the famous 20-question binary search algorithm developed by early computer scientists.

Telephone triage nurses make use of an electronic chart that displays medical records on a person-by-person basis. The chart details medical history, recent and past diagnoses and all relevant medical data. Some systems even have the ability to display x-rays and other raw lab results. By asking the caller a series of directed questions, the program will guide to triage nurse to a new set of questions ultimately zeroing in on a conclusion. The end result is a medically sound diagnosis and a suggestion as how the caller should proceed.

http://www.callcarenet.com/products-nursecare.asp Telephone triage is not for everyone. The medical expertise needed is broad and factors such as personality and the ability to elicit trust and cooperation through a sophisticated communication skill set make this a very non-traditional nursing job.
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