Managing patient expectations
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I just wanted to have a chat with you about managing patient expectations whilst we are doing triage. And I just wondered, is there anything that you currently do, have you experienced any problems with patients coming in and thinking, they are wanting something to happen that we cannot always promise at triage. Have you got any experience with this?
I have, but my experience is limited, so I was just wondering when a patient actually comes into the room and they are expecting to be seen and treated quite quickly or whatever their expectation is, how do we manage that?
So the process of triage itself, you are absolutely correct, it is a rapid, rapid assessment and we should make that clear to the patient at the outset that this is not going to be a long, protracted consultation. We are going to quickly assess them to make sure we send them to the most appropriate place of safety, basically, to carry on with their medical care. It is going to be a rapid consultation, we do not need to get in-depth and we just need to make sure we are getting as much information relevant to that presentation and that we then code the presenting complaint, we select the main discriminator, which is the most significant issue today within that presented complaint, which will then, in turn, determine where that patient needs to go. We do not ever promise x-rays, blood, it purely is a signposting of that patient care to the next clinical presentation stop.
So we do not give them expectations that may not be met?
That is exactly right. All we are going to do is make sure they are safe, signpost them on and then update the notes accordingly.