Asking, “Is this an emergency?”, may not be the best approach:

Now a new study casts doubt on the widespread practice of screening after-hours calls to physicians. Requiring untrained patients to decide which problems are serious enough to deserve immediate attention and which can wait until morning is unrealistic and potentially dangerous, some experts say. It also may represent a little-recognized source of preventable medical errors, they add. It is estimated that patients annually make 2 million to 5 million calls to doctors’ offices at night or on weekends.

If there is a miniscule chance that this can be an emergency, many doctors would simply send these patients to the ER where they can be evaluated to reduce liability risk.