The first contact between a person seeking medical treatment and the primary healthcare center is often a telephone call. During these telephone calls, the nurse decides on the required care of the persons seeking care, according to their description of their symptoms. The nurse makes an assessment/triaging to provide help to the person, according to appropriate care level and at the right time.

Since telephone triaging is complex and influenced by several different factors, the authors wanted to get comprehensive understanding of experience of telephone triage from the nurse's perspective. Hence, the aim is to describe the nurse's experience of triage and advisory service over the telephone.

The study is a literature overview based on twelve both qualitative and quantitative articles. After a thorough reading of the articles, two main themes were identified, "The complex conversation" and "Stuck between demands and lack of resources".

The result shows that factors affecting the triaging were use of decision support, ethical dilemmas occurring during the call, conversations with frequent callers and dissatisfied and threatening callers. Challenges in the work environment of the nurse were stress and fatigue, collaboration between different care providers, the telephone queue and the education and previous experience of the nurse.

The conclusion of this study was that telephone consultation is complex. The nurse often feels like a gatekeeper, nevertheless, still acting as a consultant and knowledge source. The nurse frequently feels inadequate and this is often due to factors related to the work environment.