I’ve included some wonderful helpful documents in the DOWNLOADS section above.  Please read them – especially the document called “Important Things About Telephone Consulting and Triage”.

1. Take five deep slow breaths before you pick up that phone.   
2. Always introduce your self and ask how you can help.
3. Let the patient speak
4. If the patient says anything that pisses you off – put it to one side.   Any negative thoughts – put to one side (for example a patient wanting antibiotics, you might thing “I don’t think so”.  
5. Instead, say something like “Okay, that’s possible but before anything else, do you mind if I ask you a few more questions about what’s going on?”.  Develop a story, develop a rapport and believe me, it will be ten times easier to say “Do you know what, I think things will probably settle in the next 5 days and I think you might find you’ve gone through the worst of it”.  
6. When you say or explain something, you need to sound confident.
7. But at the same time be interested in the patient – genuinely interested – and show empathy where appropriate “Oh goodness, it sounds like you’re having quite a bad time aren’t you?”
8. If something is important, then signpost to say it is important.  “Now, there are two really important things I want you to watch out for”.
9. In terms of a parent ringing about an ill child, in order to assess how ill that child is, ask them “What’s little Jack doing at the moment mum?”.  If she says “sat on the floor watching Dr Khan”, then you know he’s okay.   But if “laid on sofa, just asleep all the time, sometimes waking up when I feed him”, then he clearly needs to be seen.
10. Don’t assume just because a patient is at work that they are okay.   Would you say a patient at work but experiencing tight chest pains going up the neck and down the left arm is okay?