A Consultation Is a Question
The worst consult requests read like a copy-pasted admission note: forty lines of history, no question anywhere, and a specialist team left to reverse-engineer why they were called. The best ones state their business in two sentences — is this patient safe for theatre this week? — and attach exactly the context needed to answer.
This form produces the second kind. It is completed by the requesting clinician, never the patient, and its entire design serves one goal: the specialty team arrives answering rather than rediscovering.
The Request
- The question, stated. One or two sentences — what the requesting team actually needs from the specialty. A long text field with the discipline stated above it: a question, not a narrative.
- The essential context. Findings so far, what has been tried, the relevant results — the minimum the specialist needs, referenced or attached rather than re-typed.
- The urgency, tiered. Routine, urgent, or immediate — a multiple choice with the tiers defined locally, because ‘urgent’ means nothing until the hospital says precisely what it means. Tier inflation dies when the definitions are written down.
- Where and when. The patient’s location and the window in which the review is needed — the scheduling facts a specialty team plans its day around.
- The reply-to. Which clinician, on which number, takes the specialist’s call — the consult’s other half, and the field that prevents the ‘we called, nobody answered’ loop.
The Register Behind the Requests
Consults asked should equal consults answered, and only a register proves it. Every request lands in the response view — filterable by specialty and tier, with completion tracked — and webhooks can push requests into the hospital’s task system where the specialty teams already work. Role-based access keeps clinical detail inside the clinical crowd. Sibling clinical instruments sit in the healthcare forms collection.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who completes the request?
The treating clinician or their team — this is a professional-to-professional document from end to end. Patients and families request reviews through the ward team, not through forms.
What separates 'urgent' from 'immediate'?
Whatever the hospital defines — and the form should carry those definitions in the option labels. A common pattern: immediate for minutes-to-hours threats, urgent for same-day, routine for the next working day. Written definitions are the only defense against tier inflation.
How detailed should the context section be?
Minimum viable: the findings that bear on the question. The specialist can read the chart; the request should point at the two paragraphs that matter rather than re-cite the chart’s existence.
Can the requesting team tell whether the consult was done?
That’s what the register is for: submitted versus answered, visible by specialty and urgency. The gap between the two numbers is the consult service’s real performance review.