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Seeing is believing — picture building: a key component of telephone triage
Author(s) -
Edwards Bernie
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
journal of clinical nursing
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.94
H-Index - 102
eISSN - 1365-2702
pISSN - 0962-1067
DOI - 10.1046/j.1365-2702.1998.00113.x
Subject(s) - triage , face (sociological concept) , process (computing) , component (thermodynamics) , key (lock) , visualization , relation (database) , psychology , work (physics) , computer science , nursing , medical emergency , medicine , computer security , artificial intelligence , engineering , sociology , data mining , mechanical engineering , social science , physics , thermodynamics , operating system
• This paper describes one part of a major study aimed at building a substantive theory of the triage process. • The paper reports on some early findings of a major component of the reasoning strategy utilized by nurses when making triage decisions via the telephone. • The study reveals that in telephone triage nurses compensate for the absence of face‐to‐face contact by creating a mental image of the caller and the situation being dealt with. This forms the basis of the nurses' assessment of the urgency of the problem. • The properties that contribute to this process of ‘visualization work’ are presented and the linkages with current thought in relation to clinical reasoning are explored.