How to make a good referral

Many inpatient referrals are now on ICE. If not, or if you have an urgent query, you can bleep.
You need to know what the actual reason you’re referring is. If you don’t know or you’re not sure, check with the person who asked you to make the referral (better than having to call twice!)

• Do you want advice? Inpatient review? Them to take over care?
• What is the specific question?
• What are your/the teams concerns re: this patient?

Make sure you know or have:

• The history and examination findings
• The current plan
• The medical notes
• Recent observations and trend
• Recent blood/imaging/other results and trends
• Escalation status and usual baseline function

If your referral is urgent it should be discussed over the phone in addition to an ICE referral if requested. Speciality referral bleeps should be available on induction or via switchboard.

To refer on ICE:

1. Select patient on ICE
2. Expand requests tab on left side
3. Select “New request by patient”
4. From the tabs at the top, select “Service Requesting”
5. Then from the options at the left, navigate to the appropriate specialty and click the appropriate box
6. There will likely be a series of questions pop up. You will need to know important results that are on ICE before starting because you can’t see results and do a new request at the same time.

When making a referral it can be helpful to use the SBAR handover communication tool: https://improvement.nhs.uk/documents/2162/sbar-communication-tool.pdf