After-hours Triage Nurse

The use of a nurse telephone triage after-hours service in Australia, has helped take the pressure off general practitioners. The GPs transfer their office telephone numbers to a 1-800 after-hours number. When a patient calls a practice after-hour the call is automatically connected to a trained telephone triage nurse located in a rural hospital (McGrath, & Macdonald, 2008, p. 786).The nurse takes the patient’s details and assesses whether the patient requires a nurse’s advice, an ambulance, or a local medical appointment for the next day. However, the triage nurse is not allowed to make a diagnosis over the phone (p.787). The service receives an average of 2573 calls a year.