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    Arero Primary Hospital Triage Protocol

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    sami ketema
    This document provides a triage protocol for Arero Primary Hospital. It outlines the importance of effective triage systems to prioritize patients based on clinical need. Receptionists should be trained to identify patients needing urgent or emergency care. The protocol defines three categories for patient appointments - emergency, urgent, and routine. It stresses the importance of training reception staff, collecting call data, and having policies to direct patients to the appropriate level of care. Establishing clear triage guidelines and ensuring staff are trained in their use helps provide safe, effective patient care and protects practices from potential liability.

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    Arero Primary Hospital Triage Protocol

    Uploaded by

    sami ketema
    539 views4 pages
    This document provides a triage protocol for Arero Primary Hospital. It outlines the importance of effective triage systems to prioritize patients based on clinical need. Receptionists should be trained to identify patients needing urgent or emergency care. The protocol defines three categories for patient appointments - emergency, urgent, and routine. It stresses the importance of training reception staff, collecting call data, and having policies to direct patients to the appropriate level of care. Establishing clear triage guidelines and ensuring staff are trained in their use helps provide safe, effective patient care and protects practices from potential liability.

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    arero Primary Hospital Triage Protocol

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    This document provides a triage protocol for Arero Primary Hospital. It outlines the importance of effective triage systems to prioritize patients based on clinical need. Receptionists should be trained to identify patients needing urgent or emergency care. The protocol defines three categories for patient appointments - emergency, urgent, and routine. It stresses the importance of training reception staff, collecting call data, and having policies to direct patients to the appropriate level of care. Establishing clear triage guidelines and ensuring staff are trained in their use helps provide safe, effective patient care and protects practices from potential liability.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    539 views4 pages

    Arero Primary Hospital Triage Protocol

    Uploaded by

    sami ketema
    This document provides a triage protocol for Arero Primary Hospital. It outlines the importance of effective triage systems to prioritize patients based on clinical need. Receptionists should be trained to identify patients needing urgent or emergency care. The protocol defines three categories for patient appointments - emergency, urgent, and routine. It stresses the importance of training reception staff, collecting call data, and having policies to direct patients to the appropriate level of care. Establishing clear triage guidelines and ensuring staff are trained in their use helps provide safe, effective patient care and protects practices from potential liability.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
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    The key takeaways are that practices should have written triage protocols and guidelines to ensure patients are clinically prioritized for appointments, and non-clinical staff should be trained to recognize emergencies and direct patients appropriately. Effective triage is important for risk management.

    A triage protocol is a process for prioritizing patients needing appointments. There are three broad categories - emergency needing immediate care, urgent needing same-day appointment, and routine needing future appointment. Practices need processes to handle urgent cases when fully booked.

    Triage protocols are important for risk management and legal defense. If a patient comes to harm due to treatment delay, the practice needs to show it had sound protocols, staff was trained, and call records exist to defend itself against claims of negligence.

    ARERO PRIMARY HOSPITAL

    TRIAGE PROTOCOL

    NOV 2022
    Triage Protocol
    As a matter of good risk management, appointment systems would benefit from some method of
    identifying patients who should be seen urgently or referred to the Emergency Department. One
    way of doing this is to equip your receptionists with training and simple guidance so that they
    can carry out a rudimentary triage.
    Effective triage is an integral part of general practice and is better based on clinical need rather
    than catering to the most persuasive or demanding patients. This requires the adoption and
    promulgation of written guidelines for staff to ensure that patients seeking appointments are
    appropriately clinically prioritised – and providing appropriate training and support tools for all
    front-office staff. It also requires ongoing collection and analysis of data on requests for
    appointments (and home visits) and how they were managed. General practices need to make
    provision for both urgent and routine appointments, as well as appropriately managing
    emergencies. Allowing inappropriately triaged cases to swamp the practice could prevent the
    provision of ongoing care. An effective triage system could help direct patients to the most
    appropriate appointment at the most appropriate time, and identify patients who have an
    immediate medical need.

    What is a triage protocol?


    When a patient calls up for an appointment there are three broad areas they fall into
    (assuming that they do need an appointment):
    1. Emergency – immediate need, they need to be directed to the Emergency Department or an
    ambulance should be called
    2. Urgent – need to be seen that day
    3. Routine – need an appointment, but not same day. Practices need a process for when all the
    appointments for the morning/afternoon are gone, but a patient needs an urgent appointment (eg,
    slotted in as an extra, the call is put through to a GP/nurse. Obviously if a case is sufficiently
    urgent to require an ambulance transfer to the ED, it would be inappropriate to offer an urgent
    appointment. If the receptionist directs a patient to the Emergency department or calls a
    ambulance for a patient, the duty doctor should be informed. This action should be
    documented in the patient record.
    What should concern you
    ■■ Does your practice have a triage policy/triage guidelines?
    ■■ Are the people who take calls in your practice trained in triage?
    ■■ Are staff trained to recognise what constitutes an emergency?
    ■■ Does your telephone system have an option for urgent phone calls or calls requesting same-
    day appointments?
    ■■ If incoming phone lines are busy, do you have a message advising patients to call in an
    emergency situation?
    ■■ Do you collect and analyse call data as part of your practice’s service analysis/risk
    management procedures?

    Introducing protocols
    If you want staff to willingly follow a protocol, it is better to ensure they were involved in
    drafting it. Consider:
     referring staff to external training and/or provide it in-house
     providing scripts and simulation rehearsal.
     providing tools such as flow charts and algorithms. Practices should have sound triage
    policies and protocols in place for non-clinical staff to deal with emergency situations.
    Training staff in how to follow them will safeguard against criticism should a patient
    come to harm because of a delay in seeing someone, giving advice or being directed to
    emergency treatment.

    There should be a process whereby receptionists can reflect on their triage with senior
    receptionists or a member of the clinical team. Some patients do not like non-clinical staff
    asking clinical questions so a new triage system may need to be
    explained to patients. Consider informing patients using the practice website, the practice
    leaflet, signs at the reception desk and posters in the waiting room.

    Why are protocols important?


    If an established patient of yours comes to harm because of delay in either seeing you, or being
    given advice and directed where/how to seek emergency treatment, you may be held
    responsible. Arguing that there are “too many patients – not enough doctors” may
    be an explanation of how the harm came to happen, but it is not a defence. If a patient asserts
    that he or she came to harm as a result of delayed assessment and treatment, inevitably the
    doctor faces a strong “hindsight bias”. A successful defence would require evidence-based
    policies and protocols that the practice had sound triage policies and protocols, that the staff was
    trained in the application of those policies and protocols, and that there were good notes
    recording the content of the relevant telephone or front desk inquiries.

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