Top Tips for Telephone Consultations
Advice for effective telephone consultations:
- Remove distractions – avoid multi-tasking
- Identify the patient
- Check that it is a good time to talk (safe/confidential)
- Warm greeting – smile!!
- Warm tone of voice, verbal encouragements
- “uh huh, OK etc.”
- Try to connect on a personal level
- Refer to previous calls, do you know the patient or their family already?
- Summarise periodically
- Pacing and Language
- Speak slowly and clearly
- Avoid jargon
- Pause after asking questions
- Give patient space to ask questions
- Empathy
- Use explicit empathic statements – “that sounds really tough”
- Agenda Setting
- Find out the patient’s ideas, concerns and expectations
- Negotiate what can’t be covered in this call
- Ending the call
- Signpost – “We have just a couple of minutes left, I want to go over what we have discussed and plan the next steps”
- Clarify the plan
- What happens next?
- Safety netting
Adapted from work by Kelly Skelly and Marcy Rosenbaum, University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics