Nervous speaking to patients on the telephone?

Do you find diagnosis and management by telephone difficult?

Only just started consulting?

Finally - a guide to telephone consultations in primary care is now available!

You are trained to observe, drawing data from the way patients walk, talk and move through physical examination...

Yet consulting via the telephone requires a totally different skill-set, relying on improvisation, common sense, clinical experience and the application of communication theory, whilst practising safely, both for the patient's sake and in defence of your medico-legal position.

This book will guide you through the principles of telephone consultations, how to deal with calls during normal working hours and out-of-hours, focusing on inter-personal communication issues and clinical management by telephone.

This practical book:

* Enables readers to embark on telephone-based medicine with greater confidence and self-awareness.

* Offers practical advice on how to develop the skills needed to assess and manage common clinical problems in the context of uncertainty.

* Covers a range of telephone communication and consultation issues including consultation skills, information-gathering, accuracy of decision-making, negotiation, teamwork, safety-netting and note-taking.

* Offers numerous exercises and analyses of transcripts of telephone consultations to facilitate learning and professional development.

This book is intended for all primary healthcare professionals: GPs, registrars, practice nurses, nurse practitioners, practice receptionists, out-of-ours service call handlers and paramedics.