Abstract Details

Title Development and implementation of a telephone triage curriculum for neurology residents

Topic ��ɫ��, Research, and Methodology

Presentation(s) P3 - Poster Session 3 (5:30 PM-6:30 PM)

Poster/Presentation
Number 15-005

Objective Build a curriculum to support and improve neurology resident’s telephone triage skills of a patient emergency response line.

Background Many neurology trainees answer patient questions over the telephone while on call with minimal training or experience. Other non-neurology residencies have published quality improvement studies on trainee specific training on telephone triage skills. Not all institutions have imbedded training for residents on telephone triage skills.

Design/Methods Two months of pages routed through the pager response line were collected at an academic institution. A list of neurological complaints was created based upon the text of the page. Residents completed a pre-intervention survey of confidence level for management telephone triage. Based upon aggregated data of common neurologic complaints, a 1-hour lecture was given and triage flowsheets were developed to train residents on appropriate over-the-phone management of common neurological complaints. A post-intervention self-evaluation survey is planned for one month after the flowsheets are distributed to the residents.

Results The most common neurological complaints from patients using the pager response line were breakthrough seizure, persistent or worsening headache, a new neurological symptom, or worsening functional decline (46% of pages). Other common indications for calls included concern for a medication side effect or request for medication refills (35% of pages). For the pre-intervention survey, the majority of the residents (80%) responded as “not at all confident” to “somewhat confident” in their response to “How confident are you with answering pager response line pages independently?”.

Conclusions

Majority of residents were not confident in providing the telephone triage service for our departmental after-hours pager response line. This exemplifies the need for more specific neurological telephone triage training for residents providing this service. A curriculum has been developed and is currently being implemented based upon the most common neurological complaints found during our study period. Post training survey will be administered November 2022.

Authors/Disclosures
Midori Eckenstein, MD (University of Vermont Medical Center Neurology) PRESENTER	Dr. Eckenstein has nothing to disclose.
Jana Wold, MD (University of Utah Medical Center)	Dr. Wold has nothing to disclose.

��ɫ����

��ɫ����

��ɫ��

��ɫ��