About this course

This two day course will introduce mental health clinicians to the concept of telephone triage and will assist in the development of skills and confidence in collecting information, assessing risk, assessing needs and decision-making on care options. It consists of a number of sessions, each one building on the last and aims to provide information and skills required to perform mental health triage over the telephone.

The training has been written to meet the needs of clinicians from metropolitan and rural and remote areas. The course includes the use of tutorials, discussions and large and small group work, as well as the use of pre-prepared exercises involving audio and case studies.

Who should attend?

Experienced mental health clinicians (minimum of three years working in an acute health service) with current registration or professional affiliation in the disciplines of nursing, social work, psychology and occupational therapy.

While there is no explicit definition of “experienced mental health clinicians”, for the purposes of the State Mental Health Telephone Access Line Program and the operation of NSW Mental Health Line, “experienced” means having at least three years’ experience working in acute mental health settings conducting initial mental health assessments.  

Participants are selected by district managers of the access line forwarded to the Manager Mental Health Emergency Care programs at the Mental Health Branch, NSW Ministry of Health. These are then forwarded to Sydney Education and entered into My Health Learning.

What will you learn?

By the end of this course you will be able to:

1. Analyse communication process skills required for telephone communication
2. Identify the process and goal of triage and specifically telephone based triage
3. Demonstrate the triage process to gather information, determine initial plan, management and referral
4. Compose and formulate a plan and service to address the needs of the caller, through simulations
5. Choose and apply strategies to modify risk and encourage active solution focused interventions by the caller
6. Compose documentation that defends the changing of response times in relation to triage categories on the basis of clinical reasoning
7. Understand and apply the Crisis Triage Rating Scale
8. Apply communication micro skills developed to assist with the gathering of potentially sensitive and challenging information.

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