Managing the Absence of Patient Visibility in Telephone:A Qualitative Descriptive Study Triage

Managing the Absence of Patient Visibility in Telephone:A Qualitative Descriptive Study Triage

Introduction

The basis of this paper is the concept of managing the absence of a patient via telephone through a descriptive study triage, at this moment referred to as ‘Tele nurse.’ Mainly, this involves calling a patient back after a patient had made a call to monitor the progress of the patient concerning his/her prognosis. An example of this scenario would be a nurse making a call to find out the course of gastroenteritis in a child, once or severally, after the initial phone call. According to Pettinari and Jessopp (2001), managing the absence of patient visibility in telephone is different from making a follow-up call because follow-up calls are concerned with knowing the progress of a patient after their stay in the hospital. However, the former is concerned with giving appropriate support to the individual seeking care by enabling the reexamination of the disease status and providing useful self-care advice.

I got interested in this area during my engagement with a local hospital as a clinical officer. So far, my involvement in giving self-care advice to care seekers has gone deep since I have experience years, working partly in development and care, research, and as a clinical officer in the same local health facility. The primary responsibilities and tasks in telenursing are to examine the most severe care needs, give self-care advice to care seekers, and, most importantly, to coordinate resources for providing appropriate care (Kaminsky, Rosenqvist and Holmström, 2009). Managing the absence of patient visibility in telephone is, in itself, an intensive and complicated task in the field of nursing since nurses hardly work without telenursing. According to Yang, Rhee, and Asada (1998), approximately 1000 Tele nurses work by responding to case seekers’ calls via the care line.

Examining and advising care seekers about their health-related problems through a telephone is not limited to speaking to the care-seeker himself/herself, but also involves giving advice indirectly through others. In this regard, this paper places its primary focus on parents/guardians of little children suffering from gastroenteritis. This dissertation aims to increase the knowledge of telenursing through ‘Managing the Absence of Patient Visibility in Telephone’ as a research phenomenon. In the previous studies, managing the absence of patient visibility in telephone has only been revealed in a few reviews where the principal objective has been the monitoring of calls; otherwise, few to no researchers have shown interest in the central phenomenon.

Background of the Study

Monitoring calls: according to Takayanagi et al. (2018), almost 2 million calls out of the 4 million calls made through the care line in 2018 were as a result of telenursing. Amongst these calls, care seekers were allowed to receive a patient visibility management call (see figure 1 below). In 2018, the care line registered more than 200,000 calls. According to Lee et al. (2008), managing the absence of patient visibility in telephone refers to a situation where a Tele nurse supervises or monitors the course of disease through phone calls. For instance, a Tele nurse may regularly make calls to a care seeker to find out the course of the illness that the care seeker is suffering from, and thus give an appropriate self-care advice depending on the needs presented by the care seeker at the time of call. In some instances, the Tele nurse may consider it necessary to refer the care seeker to the nearest health facility after monitoring before (Lee et al. 2008).

Figure 1: Monitoring call illustration

In typical situations, Tele nurses who make the initial call do make a monitoring call, although some other nurses may as well do the same. According to the nursing dictionary sixth edition, monitoring is an intervallic observation of the condition of a patient, which can be done visually, manually, or electronically. According to the Swedish healthcare for children, monitoring is a technique of working in which there is a constant follow-up of a child’s health to detect any possible anomaly as early as possible (Massoudi, Wickberg, and Hwang, 2011.

Observation and monitoring in the nursing field are part of the profession; thus, professional nurses are those that are associated with ‘watchful care,’ such as examining signs of improvement or deterioration in patients’ health conditions and ensuring their safety. Ernesäter et al. (2009) demonstrated in their study that Tele nurses apply the 22 criteria as a means of examining healthcare needs. The rules comprise of care seeker monitoring by doing a follow-up to the course of a health problem, either through a single call or more calls.

Literature Review

Methodology

Results and Discussions

Conclusion and Recommendations

Reference List

Ernesäter, A., Holmström, I., and Engström, M., 2009. Telenurses’ experiences of working with computerized decision support: supporting, inhibiting, and quality improving. Journal of advanced nursing, 65(5), pp.1074-1083. Retrieved from: http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:232495/FULLTEXT01.pdf

Pettinari, C.J., and Jessopp, L., 2001. ‘Your ears become your eyes’: managing the absence of visibility in NHS Direct. Journal of advanced nursing, 36(5), pp.668-675. Retrieved from: file:///C:/Users/BRCHE/Downloads/Pettinari_et_al-2001-Journal_of_Advanced_Nursing%20(1).pdf

Kaminsky, E., Rosenqvist, U., and Holmström, I., 2009. Telenurses’ understanding of work: a detective or an educator? Journal of advanced nursing, 65(2), pp.382-390. Retrieved from: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17482631.2019.1633174

Lee, H., Park, K., Lee, B., Choi, J., and Elmasri, R., 2008, July. Issues in data fusion for healthcare monitoring. In Proceedings of the 1st international conference on PErvasive Technologies Related to Assistive Environments (p. 3). ACM. Retrieved from: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ramez_Elmasri/publication/221410397_Issues_in_data_fusion_for_healthcare_monitoring/links/00b7d52af359948536000000/Issues-in-data-fusion-for-healthcare-monitoring.pdf

Massoudi, P., Wickberg, B., and Hwang, C.P., 2011. Fathers’ involvement in Swedish child health care–the role of nurses’ practices and attitudes. Acta Paediatrica, 100(3), pp.396-401. Retrieved from: http://epipublic.vgregion.se/upload/KJV/Litt.tips/Fathers%20involvment%20in%20Swedish%20child%20health%20care,%20Massoudi%202011.pdf

Takayanagi, H., Kawakatsu, C., Kihara, T., Kawaguchi, K., Kawaguchi, H., Furukawa, T., and Kimura, Y., 2018. Basic Study on Elderly Tele-nursing Model for Emote Nursing by Smart Device. Journal of Civil Engineering and Architecture, 12, pp.605-614. Retrieved from: http://www.davidpublisher.org/Public/uploads/Contribute/5bd01b3007a12.pdf

Yang, B.H., Rhee, S., and Asada, H.H., 1998, May. A twenty-four-hour telenursing system using a ring sensor. In Proceedings. 1998 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (Cat. No. 98CH36146) (Vol. 1, pp. 387-392). IEEE. Retrieved from: https://www.is.mpg.de/uploads_file/attachment/attachment/384/book_contentwref.pdf