The medical profession has no days which can be characterized as easy. Medical professionals receive no work-related benefits when they are detached from their day shift and reposted to night shifts regardless of their pay rate. People who perform call-back nursing duties will have dealt with unexpected night-time calls. How many phone calls during evenings need urgent medical attention among all hospital calls of average? Medical practice answering services enable doctors to solve the problem of managing night-time patient communications.
First establish a protocol for managing outside office calls before establishing fundamental guidelines for action.
The management approach for handling after-hour calls needs to be articulated from the beginning. The patients need to understand clearly the definition of emergency medical needs. After-hours calls should be defined against situations the patient can manage during normal working hours.
- The complete explanation requires to determine whether heart pains or heavy bleeding or trouble breathing constitute immediate attention. Heavy bleeding? Unable to catch a breath? These situations must be regarded as emergencies.
- Patients obtain adequate information by reading leaflets and accessing your web page while waiting area posters provide additional guidance. The information would enable patients to know appropriate emergency actions and their corresponding levels.
- Show assertiveness to teach patients appropriate symptom self-care methods. When you experience slight fever consumption of plenty of fluids should be your first course of action according to the directions. Use medication to relax alongside resting until your condition improves enough to call for medical help the next day.
The implementation of Triage System or Call Interposer represents the second step of this solution.
An automated answering service along with nurse triage lines will function in hospital settings. Every process holds intentions to forward genuine emergency cases to your services. Such services prove useful under what specific healthcare situations?
The following points provide a way to answer our question:
- Every patient has the initial contact with a nurse who evaluates if emergency medical assistance is required. The evaluation checks both the emergency status and the required urgency of potential intervention.
- Your office operates with less disturbing non-urgent cases which allows you to focus on critical situations.
- The system reduces patient distress simultaneously. The patients are guaranteed prompt care for their health problems because they receive urgent attention. The patient has opportunities to seek help from different personnel besides you.
Begin by Organizing Hospital Calls for Maximum Effectiveness
A significant part of medical practice requires handling patient calls which sometimes prove disturbing since urgent medical situations are not always involved. Implement specific methods and correct prioritization procedures to organize after hours calls. The correct approach to this matter requires clarification.
- The three critical signals of a life-threatening emergency include severe pain combined with breathing problems and intense chest pain that indicates heavy bleeding. These signs add up to fatal medical situations which doctors should address immediately.
- Any problems with mild illness or pain conditions will receive attention during after-hours schedules including cases like a minor fever or soreness. Although treatment follow-ups are needed both cases do not represent emergency situations.
- You need to contact our general or overview call line for medication check-ups or appointment-related inquiries. Such a medical case is likely to wait until morning.
Finding Ideal Policies
Our discussion should start with boundary management. As someone who works in healthcare you undoubtedly qualify as a human first and practitioner second. You need both periods of rest with your loved one and time for work-related recharge.
- Personal phones should not be allowed through the implementation of an on-call number or service. Your patients have no valid reason to communicate with you through your personal phone number.
- Establish temporary phone call durations for achieving prompt responses from patients who require essential medical attention. Inform patients about the future actions while simultaneously offering instructions regarding needed steps. Talks should remain brief unless there is a required purpose to extend them.
- Large clinics should establish backup support systems which allow practitioners to rotate duty shifts and designate call responsibilities to their colleagues.
Indicates You Should Avoid Technology Reservations and Rely on Its Support
Throughout the non-work hours many different automated communication systems exist to handle incoming phone calls. Three essential technologies patients can use to contact the facility are auto-messaging services plus patient portals and answering services.
- The automated system sends beneficial information to patients about emergency protocols and other critical situations.
- Patients portals provide users with an opportunity to submit both basic and non-urgent inquiries through this system. Transient questions unlikely to arise at visit times make up most of these inquiries.
- The 2 AM refill requests get redirected to answering services which obtain and resolve essential calls instead.
Last Words: Remain Calm While Dealing with Your Patients
The operation of managing after hour calls proves straightforward for most medical professionals. Having appropriate ideas and tools makes up the entire basis of success. Patient satisfaction stands as the main objective and the right approaches simplify this concept.
