Phone Triage and Urgent Cues for Reception
Notice an urgent cue on the phone, at the desk or in the waiting room, say the right words, and hand it to the right person straight away, without ever assessing the patient yourself.
Who this is for
Every receptionist and administration staff member in an Australian general practice, including experienced staff doing an annual refresher. It is the stand-alone, refresher-length version of the urgent-cue module in the Comprehensive GP Receptionist Certificate and teaches the same sequence, scripts and helplines.
The people and practice in this course are made up. Use your current clinician-approved local guide. An emergency cue still means 000 now; report an obsolete or conflicting guide without delaying emergency action.
Learning time: allow about 45 minutes, including practice and assessment. Take the time you need.
What you will practise
- Asking the one question that comes before “can you hold?”, on every call.
- Staying in your role: what reception does, what it never does, and the words for “do you think it’s serious?”.
- Hearing the emergency cue groups in the words callers actually use, and sending the caller to 000.
- Making the 000 call yourself when the caller can’t, with a colleague and alone.
- Acting when a waiting patient looks or feels worse, and describing what you saw without guessing what it means.
- Responding to a hint of self-harm: stay, get the clinician, 000 for immediate danger.
- Interrupting a busy nurse or doctor, and what to do when no clinician can be reached.
- Writing a note that shows the person’s words, who you told, what they said and when.
Four practical lessons
- Notice and hand over: your part in triage
- Urgent cues on the phone: hear it, say it, 000
- At the desk and in the waiting room: notice the change
- Hand over, record, and when no clinician is free
Learn by making decisions
Each lesson opens with a Rivergum situation and asks you to decide before it explains. You choose, check and can retry; then you say your own words aloud and compare them with an example. Lessons 2 to 4 start with a quick recall question, and lesson 4 ends with one whole shift that draws on every lesson. Lessons 1, 3 and 4 each have a short collapsed box for practice managers. A one-page printable desk card keeps the scripts, the 000 cues and the note format beside your phone.
Assessment and completion
Complete all four lessons, pass the six-question knowledge check (80%) and the six-question safety decisions quiz (100%). There is no time limit; you can read the explanations and retry. Practice tasks are not marked. You receive a certificate of completion.
This is professional development, not accredited CPD, and it is not endorsed by the RACGP or any other body. It gives no clinical authority and is not CPR or first aid training. It supports the triage training your practice’s clinical team provides; it does not replace your practice’s own triage guide or emergency response plan.
Use Mark Complete when you finish a lesson, then return through My Courses.
Official sources
- RACGP Standards for general practices, 5th edition: GP1.1 Responsive system for patient care
- RACGP Standards, 5th edition: C1.2 Communications
- RACGP Standards, 5th edition: C8.1 Education and training of non-clinical staff
- RACGP Standards, 6th edition: PP2 Communications
- RACGP Standards, 6th edition: PP9 Responsive system for patient care
- RACGP Standards, 6th edition: F4 Induction, training and supporting performance
- Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care: RACGP Standards 6th edition and accreditation
- healthdirect: Calling triple zero (000)
- Australian Government: Triple Zero
- healthdirect: Poisoning (Poisons Information Centre 13 11 26)
- healthdirect: Warning signs of suicide
- Lifeline (13 11 14)
- 13YARN (13 92 76)
- Beyond Blue (1300 22 4636)
- North Western Melbourne PHN: Prioritisation of patients, urgency and triage guide for non-clinical staff
- Primary Health Tasmania: POPGUNS triage process chart
DESK CARD · Phone Triage and Urgent Cues for Reception · GP Staff Academy · as at October 2026
Before “can you hold?”
“Is this an emergency, or do you need urgent medical help right now?” Already told you something serious? Skip it and act.
000 cues: POPGUNS (a memory aid; your guide comes first)
- P Pain, pressure or tightness in the chest
- O Overdose taken on purpose, or any poisoning with collapse, a seizure or breathing difficulty
- P Pregnancy with severe pain, heavy bleeding or collapse
- G Gastrointestinal bleeding, including vomiting blood
- U Unconscious, collapsed, hard to rouse, or having a seizure
- N Neurological change: new or sudden confusion, sudden weakness of the face, arm or leg, trouble speaking, sudden severe headache
- S Severe breathing difficulty, blue lips, unable to speak in sentences
Also 000: bleeding that won’t stop, a suspected severe allergic reaction, anything else serious and time-critical.
Accidental poisoning or medicine mix-up, no symptoms: the caller rings the Poisons Information Centre on 13 11 26 now; you tell the nurse. Unclear or not in the guide: nurse or duty doctor now.
The 000 script
“This needs urgent medical help. Please hang up and call Triple Zero, 000, now and ask for an ambulance. Don’t drive to the practice.”
Who makes the 000 call
The caller. If they can’t: “I’m calling the ambulance for you now. Tell me your exact address and stay on the line.” With a colleague: one stays on the line, the other rings 000. Alone: take the address and callback number, end the call, ring 000 yourself. Then tell the nurse or duty doctor.
A hint of self-harm
- Stay: no hold, no call-back.
- Listen without minimising.
- A colleague fetches the duty doctor, or the nurse as backup.
- 000 if they can’t stay safe, have harmed themselves, describe an overdose or are about to act.
- No secrecy. Record their exact words.
“Thank you for telling me. Please stay on the line while I get the doctor. Can I take your address and a number to call back on, in case we get cut off?”
Interrupt: a message is not a handover
“Sorry to interrupt. A caller says ‘[their exact words]’. The guide says nurse or doctor now. Can you take it?” Wait for the answer; pass it on word for word. Nurse can’t take it: duty doctor.
The note: FACTS
Facts: their words in quotation marks, never a diagnosis · Action: what you did · Contact: who you told, what they said · Time: call, handover, reply · Staff: your name and role
Duty doctor: ____________ · Nurse: ____________ · Practice manager: ____________
Use the current clinician-approved local guide. An emergency cue still means 000 now. If the normal clinician cannot accept an urgent or unclear call, use the approved backup route; never promise an unaccepted callback.
Urgent inbox or voicemail message
Act when you discover it: alert the clinical lead and use the approved contact and emergency route. Do not leave it in the routine queue. Record when the message was sent, when you found it, contact attempts and who accepted the handover. An old timestamp does not prove the patient is safe.