Dental Emergency Triage

The person deciding who gets today's emergency slot is usually the one with the least clinical training in the building. This gives them a script: the questions that separate a cracked cusp from a spreading infection, the handful of answers that mean stop booking and send them to hospital now, and the interim advice they can give without practising dentistry over the phone.

What This Skill Produces

• Urgency banding — see now / see today / see within 48 hours / routine, with the finding that puts a call in each band
• The question script — the short ordered set that sorts most calls, in plain language a non-clinician can read aloud
• Red-flag escalation — the answers that mean emergency department, not dental chair, stated unambiguously
• Interim advice within scope — what front desk may safely say about pain, bleeding, and an avulsed tooth, and what they must not
• The callback rule — who is rung back by a clinician, and how fast
• The documentation line — what to record about the call, because triage decisions get reviewed

Required Inputs