Author:
Gamst-Jensen Hejdi,Huibers Linda,Pedersen Kristoffer,Christensen Erika F,Ersbøll Annette K,Lippert Freddy K,Egerod Ingrid
Abstract
BackgroundTelephone triage is used to assess acute illness or injury. Clinical decision making is often assisted by triage tools that lack callers’ perspectives. This study analysed callers’ perception of urgency, defined as degree of worry in acute care telephone calls.AimTo explore the caller’s ability to quantify their degree of worry, the association between degree of worry and variables related to the caller, the effect of degree of worry on triage outcome, and the thematic content of the caller’s worry.Design and settingA mixed-methods study with simultaneous convergent design combining descriptive statistics and thematic analysis of 180 calls to a Danish out-of-hours service.MethodThe following quantitative data were measured: age of caller, sex, reason for encounter, symptom duration, triage outcome, and degree of worry (rated from 1 = minimally worried to 5 = extremely worried). Qualitative data consisted of audio-recorded telephone calls.ResultsMost callers (170 out of 180) were able to scale their worry when contacting the out-of-hours service (median = 3, interquartile range = 2–4, mean = 2.76). Degree of worry was associated with female sex (odds ratio [OR] 1.98, 95% CI = 1.13 to 3.45) and symptom duration (>24 hours: OR 2.01, 95% CI = 1.13 to 3.45) (reference <5 hours), but not with age or reason for encounter. A high degree of worry significantly increased the chance of being triaged to a face-to-face consultation. The thematic content of worry varied from emotions of feeling bothered to feeling distressed. Callers provided more contextual information when asked about their degree of worry.ConclusionCallers were able to rate their degree of worry. The degree of worry scale is feasible for larger-scale studies if incorporating a patient-centred approach in out-of-hours telephone triage.
Publisher
Royal College of General Practitioners
Reference25 articles.
1. Self-Rated Health and Mortality: A Review of Twenty-Seven Community Studies
2. Validity of telephone and physical triage in emergency care: the Netherlands Triage System;van Ierland;Fam Pract,2011
3. Derkx HP (2008) ‘For your ears only’. Quality of telephone triage at out-of-hours centres in the Netherlands. (Department of General Practice, University of Maastricht, the Netherlands) https://cris.maastrichtuniversity.nl/portal/files/813303/guid-41c50c8a-4dd2-43df-b492-ebf889cd4424-ASSET1.0 (accessed 24 Jan 2018).
4. Cresswell JW Clark VLP (2011) Designing and conducting mixed methods research (Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA), 2nd edn.
5. Wadmann S Kjellberg J Kjellberg K (2015) Enstrenget og visiteret akutsystem i Region Hovedstaden. (Copenhagen )[Single-stranded and well-visited acute system in the capital region].
Cited by
22 articles.
订阅此论文施引文献
订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献