Delphine Asari has worked CareLine, the Brackwell Health Authority’s after-hours triage line, for four years, long enough to recognise the shape of a night before the first call comes in.
“Weeknights it’s mostly parents with a feverish kid, worried whether it’s worth an emergency room trip,” she said. “Weekends run different. More falls, more chest pain calls, more people who’ve been putting off calling anybody until it got bad enough.”
The line answers around 4,200 calls a month, handled by six triage nurses rotating across three shifts. Each call follows a structured questioning protocol designed to sort callers into one of three outcomes: home care advice, a same-day clinic referral, or a direct instruction to seek emergency care immediately.
“The protocol is there so the advice doesn’t depend on which nurse happens to be on shift,” Asari said. “It still takes judgment. A script doesn’t hear the tone in somebody’s voice.”
Call volume has risen steadily, Asari said, a trend she attributes partly to overnight clinic capacity elsewhere in the city not keeping pace with demand. Staffing has stayed at six nurses for the past two years despite the increase, meaning busier shifts run closer to the edge of what the team can absorb without delay.
“We haven’t dropped a call yet that I know of,” she said. “I also haven’t seen a slow Tuesday in a long time.”
The Health Authority says it is reviewing staffing levels as part of its next budget cycle.
