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Providing cell phone numbers and email addresses to Patients: the physician's perspective

BACKGROUND: The provision of cell phone numbers and email addresses enhances the accessibility of medical consultations, but can add to the burden of physicians' routine clinical practice and affect their free time. The objective was to assess the attitudes of physicians to providing their tele...

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Autores principales: Peleg, Roni, Avdalimov, Angelika, Freud, Tamar
Formato: Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2011
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3076270/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21426591
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1756-0500-4-76
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author Peleg, Roni
Avdalimov, Angelika
Freud, Tamar
author_facet Peleg, Roni
Avdalimov, Angelika
Freud, Tamar
author_sort Peleg, Roni
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: The provision of cell phone numbers and email addresses enhances the accessibility of medical consultations, but can add to the burden of physicians' routine clinical practice and affect their free time. The objective was to assess the attitudes of physicians to providing their telephone number or email address to patients. METHODS: Primary care physicians in the southern region of Israel completed a structured questionnaire that related to the study objective. RESULTS: The study population included 120 primary care physicians with a mean age of 41.2 ± 8.5, 88 of them women (73.3%). Physicians preferred to provide their cell phone number rather than their email address (P = 0.0007). They preferred to answer their cell phones only during the daytime and at predetermined times, but would answer email most hours of the day, including weekends and holidays (P = 0.001). More physicians (79.7%) would have preferred allotted time for email communication than allotted time for cell phone communication (50%). However, they felt that email communication was more likely to lead to miscommunication than telephone calls (P = 0.0001). There were no differences between male and female physicians on the provision of cell phone numbers or email addresses to patients. Older physicians were more prepared to provide cell phone numbers that younger ones (P = 0.039). CONCLUSIONS: The attitude of participating physicians was to provide their cell phone number or email address to some of their patients, but most of them preferred to give out their cell phone number.
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spelling pubmed-30762702011-04-14 Providing cell phone numbers and email addresses to Patients: the physician's perspective Peleg, Roni Avdalimov, Angelika Freud, Tamar BMC Res Notes Research Article BACKGROUND: The provision of cell phone numbers and email addresses enhances the accessibility of medical consultations, but can add to the burden of physicians' routine clinical practice and affect their free time. The objective was to assess the attitudes of physicians to providing their telephone number or email address to patients. METHODS: Primary care physicians in the southern region of Israel completed a structured questionnaire that related to the study objective. RESULTS: The study population included 120 primary care physicians with a mean age of 41.2 ± 8.5, 88 of them women (73.3%). Physicians preferred to provide their cell phone number rather than their email address (P = 0.0007). They preferred to answer their cell phones only during the daytime and at predetermined times, but would answer email most hours of the day, including weekends and holidays (P = 0.001). More physicians (79.7%) would have preferred allotted time for email communication than allotted time for cell phone communication (50%). However, they felt that email communication was more likely to lead to miscommunication than telephone calls (P = 0.0001). There were no differences between male and female physicians on the provision of cell phone numbers or email addresses to patients. Older physicians were more prepared to provide cell phone numbers that younger ones (P = 0.039). CONCLUSIONS: The attitude of participating physicians was to provide their cell phone number or email address to some of their patients, but most of them preferred to give out their cell phone number. BioMed Central 2011-03-23 /pmc/articles/PMC3076270/ /pubmed/21426591 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1756-0500-4-76 Text en Copyright ©2011 Peleg et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Peleg, Roni
Avdalimov, Angelika
Freud, Tamar
Providing cell phone numbers and email addresses to Patients: the physician's perspective
title Providing cell phone numbers and email addresses to Patients: the physician's perspective
title_full Providing cell phone numbers and email addresses to Patients: the physician's perspective
title_fullStr Providing cell phone numbers and email addresses to Patients: the physician's perspective
title_full_unstemmed Providing cell phone numbers and email addresses to Patients: the physician's perspective
title_short Providing cell phone numbers and email addresses to Patients: the physician's perspective
title_sort providing cell phone numbers and email addresses to patients: the physician's perspective
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3076270/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21426591
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1756-0500-4-76
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