1. Call (919) 781-7490 during regular office hours whenever possible. If no answer, dial (919) 831-5526. We will be able to serve you and your child better if we have access to the medical record. Therefore, please call during office hours for routine questions and concerns and prescription refills.
2. Make the call yourself if at all possible. Relaying the message through a third party may result in misleading information.
3. Identify yourself and give your child's full name and age. Describe the condition in specific terms and be sure to state if the child was seen recently for the condition.
4. Do not hold a crying baby while trying to talk.
5. Have a pencil and paper ready when you call. Do not rely on remembering instructions, especially when you may be upset.
6. Be brief. Others may be waiting. If the staff is unable to solve a problem that is urgent, your phone number will be taken and one of the doctors will call you back between patients.
7. Call us, if at all possible, before rushing to the emergency room, so that the necessary arrangements can be made.
8. We have a phone triage program to assist us in meeting your needs during the times when the office is closed. If you call our office after hours, our answering service will notify a pediatric call center located in the Emergency Department at Wake Medical Center. Within thirty minutes, or immediately for emergencies, your call will be returned by a trained pediatric nurse who will assess your child's symptoms using guidelines that we have approved.
9. Recommendations might include care you can provide at home, or a follow-up call from your doctor or in extreme cases a visit to the emergency department. Should you ever be uncomfortable with the advice that you are given, you may ask to speak to the doctor from our practice that is on call. All communication between our patients and the call center will be thoroughly documented and a report sent to our office for review.
10. Please allow forty-eight hours for prescription refills and a week for any daycare, school, camp, or sports forms to be completed.