Telehealth/Telephone Triage

Telehealth nursing is a relatively new phenomenon, which was formulated in the late 1980s in Canada and the US. Using the poison control center model, registered nurses provide information and advice for non-urgent medical conditions.

Working in a call center environment, nurses field calls ranging from those that can be handled with self-care instructions to those that are immediate transfers to 911.

Nurses must have previous clinical experience as a registered nurse. To thrive in telehealth jobs, nurses must have excellent communication skills, strong clinical judgement, critical thinking, ability to multi-task, and comfort with technology. And they must be able to deal with bouts of routine, where, for example, they have a string of identical calls during flu season.

But the rewards are many: variety in diseases and patient personality; the opportunity to develop strong interviewing and teaching skills; feeling helpful/useful to people in a crisis; and instant feedback and gratification.

For more information see our article Telehealth Nursing.

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