Cardiff University | Prifysgol Caerdydd ORCA
Online Research @ Cardiff 
WelshClear Cookie - decide language by browser settings

The quality, safety and content of telephone and face-to-face consultations: a comparative study

McKinstry, B., Hammersley, V., Burton, C., Pinnock, H., Elton, R., Dowell, J., Sawdon, N., Heaney, D., Elwyn, Glyn ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0917-6286 and Sheikh, A. 2010. The quality, safety and content of telephone and face-to-face consultations: a comparative study. Quality and Safety in Health Care 19 (4) , pp. 298-303. 10.1136/qshc.2008.027763

Full text not available from this repository.

Abstract

Introduction Telephone consulting is increasingly used to improve access to care and optimise resources for day-time work. However, there remains a debate about how such consultations differ from face-to-face consultations in terms of content quality and/or safety. To investigate this, a comparison of family doctors' telephone and face-to-face consultations was conducted. Methods 106 audio-recordings (from 19 doctors in nine practices) of telephone and face-to-face consultations, stratified at doctor level, were compared using the Roter Interaction Analysis Scale (RIAS) (content measure), the OPTION (observing patient involvement in decision making scale) and a modified scale based on the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) consultation assessment instrument (measuring quality and safety). Patient satisfaction and enablement were measured using validated instruments. The Roter Interaction Analysis Scale scores were compared by multiple linear regression adjusting for covariates; other continuous measures by χ2 and Student t tests and binary measures as odds ratios. Results Telephone consultations were shorter (4.6 vs 9.7 min, p<0.001), presented fewer problems (1.2 vs 1.8, p<0.001) and included less data gathering, counselling/advice and rapport building (all p<0.001) than face-to-face consultations. These differences remained significant when consultation length and number of problems were taken into account. Telephone consultations were judged less likely to include sufficient information to exclude important serious illnesses. Patient involvement and satisfaction outcomes were similar in both consultation types. Conclusion Although telephone consultations are convenient and judged satisfactory by patients and doctors, they may compromise patient safety more than face-to-face consultations and further research is required to elucidate this. Telephone consultations may be more suited to follow-up and management of long-term conditions than for in-hours acute management.

Item Type: Article
Date Type: Publication
Status: Published
Schools: Medicine
Subjects: R Medicine > R Medicine (General)
Publisher: BMJ
ISSN: 1475-3898
Last Modified: 20 Oct 2022 08:48
URI: https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/29700

Citation Data

Cited 77 times in Scopus. View in Scopus. Powered By Scopus® Data

Actions (repository staff only)

Edit Item Edit Item