Oncology Nursing Telephone Triage Workshop: Impact on Nurses' Knowledge, Confidence, and Skill

Outpatient oncology nurses are responsible for symptom assessment/management and care coordination during telephone triage. Nursing telephone triage interventions can improve patient outcomes and clinical efficiency. Therefore, the lack of education and training in telephone triage can greatly impact patient care.

Using a prospective pretest/posttest design, we sought to determine if a telephone triage educational workshop would improve oncology nurses' knowledge, confidence, and skill over 12 weeks.

The educational intervention incorporated an online didactic lecture, group case scenario, and feedback on a virtual triage simulation. Evaluation was conducted before and after the intervention through an online, 13-item survey (knowledge and confidence) and simulation utilizing a 56-item checklist (skills).

Thirteen oncology nurses were enrolled; 54% did not have telephone triage experience before this job. A total of 12 participants completed the workshop. From pretest to posttest, there was a median 1.0 out of 5.0 (interquartile range, 2.8) improvement in confidence (P = .008) and a 26.3% (interquartile range, 15.2) improvement in skills (P = .002). There was no difference in knowledge scores from pretest to posttest (P = .11).

This workshop was associated with an improvement in oncology nurse confidence and skill, using telephone triage models. It benefits an existing process within the outpatient center and it highlights a new educational strategy that may optimize nursing practice and improve patient care and experience.

This workshop contributes to existing evidence of telephone triage models and nursing education. The findings can guide future research, nursing orientation, and educational activities within the field of nursing and telehealth.