Telephone triage: 5 years' experience

Triaging by telephone has long been a 'bone of contention' among emergency nurses in Victoria, Australia, with some nurses adamant that telephone advice is appropriate and other nurses equally adamant that telephone advice should not be given at all. Almost unanimously agreed upon by both groups is that documentation of the call, and/or the advice given, is time consuming and may pose a legal risk to the nurse if something untoward should happen to the patient. This paper relates our experience including our policy on telephone triage with an analysis of 5 years of documented telephone calls from January 1991 to January 1996.