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Qualitative study of patient views on a ‘telephone-first’ approach in general practice in England: speaking to the GP by telephone before making face-to-face appointments
OBJECTIVE: To understand patients’ views on a ‘telephone-first’ approach, in which all appointment requests in general practice are followed by a telephone call from the general practitioner (GP). DESIGN: Qualitative interviews with patients and carers. SETTING: Twelve general practices in England....
Autores principales: | , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BMJ Publishing Group
2018
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6318515/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30598491 http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2018-026197 |
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author | Ball, Sarah L Newbould, Jennifer Corbett, Jennie Exley, Josephine Pitchforth, Emma Roland, Martin |
author_facet | Ball, Sarah L Newbould, Jennifer Corbett, Jennie Exley, Josephine Pitchforth, Emma Roland, Martin |
author_sort | Ball, Sarah L |
collection | PubMed |
description | OBJECTIVE: To understand patients’ views on a ‘telephone-first’ approach, in which all appointment requests in general practice are followed by a telephone call from the general practitioner (GP). DESIGN: Qualitative interviews with patients and carers. SETTING: Twelve general practices in England. PARTICIPANTS: 43 patients, including 30 women, nine aged over 75 years, four parents of young children, five carers, five patients with hearing impairment and two whose first language was not English. RESULTS: Patients expressed varied views, often strongly held, ranging from enthusiasm for to hostility towards the ‘telephone-first’ approach. The new system suited some patients, avoiding the need to come into the surgery but was problematic for others, for example, when it was difficult for someone working in an open plan office to take a call-back. A substantial proportion of negative comments were about the operation of the scheme itself rather than the principles behind it, for example, difficulty getting through on the phone or being unable to schedule when the GP would phone back. Some practices were able to operate the scheme in a way that met their patients’ needs better than others and practices varied significantly in how they had implemented the approach. CONCLUSIONS: The ‘telephone-first’ approach appears to work well for some patients, but others find it much less acceptable. Some of the reported problems related to how the approach had been implemented rather than the ‘telephone-first’ approach in principle and suggests there may be potential for some of the challenges experienced by patients to be overcome. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-6318515 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2018 |
publisher | BMJ Publishing Group |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-63185152019-01-14 Qualitative study of patient views on a ‘telephone-first’ approach in general practice in England: speaking to the GP by telephone before making face-to-face appointments Ball, Sarah L Newbould, Jennifer Corbett, Jennie Exley, Josephine Pitchforth, Emma Roland, Martin BMJ Open General practice / Family practice OBJECTIVE: To understand patients’ views on a ‘telephone-first’ approach, in which all appointment requests in general practice are followed by a telephone call from the general practitioner (GP). DESIGN: Qualitative interviews with patients and carers. SETTING: Twelve general practices in England. PARTICIPANTS: 43 patients, including 30 women, nine aged over 75 years, four parents of young children, five carers, five patients with hearing impairment and two whose first language was not English. RESULTS: Patients expressed varied views, often strongly held, ranging from enthusiasm for to hostility towards the ‘telephone-first’ approach. The new system suited some patients, avoiding the need to come into the surgery but was problematic for others, for example, when it was difficult for someone working in an open plan office to take a call-back. A substantial proportion of negative comments were about the operation of the scheme itself rather than the principles behind it, for example, difficulty getting through on the phone or being unable to schedule when the GP would phone back. Some practices were able to operate the scheme in a way that met their patients’ needs better than others and practices varied significantly in how they had implemented the approach. CONCLUSIONS: The ‘telephone-first’ approach appears to work well for some patients, but others find it much less acceptable. Some of the reported problems related to how the approach had been implemented rather than the ‘telephone-first’ approach in principle and suggests there may be potential for some of the challenges experienced by patients to be overcome. BMJ Publishing Group 2018-12-31 /pmc/articles/PMC6318515/ /pubmed/30598491 http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2018-026197 Text en © Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2018. Re-use permitted under CC BY. Published by BMJ. This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported (CC BY 4.0) license, which permits others to copy, redistribute, remix, transform and build upon this work for any purpose, provided the original work is properly cited, a link to the licence is given, and indication of whether changes were made. See: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
spellingShingle | General practice / Family practice Ball, Sarah L Newbould, Jennifer Corbett, Jennie Exley, Josephine Pitchforth, Emma Roland, Martin Qualitative study of patient views on a ‘telephone-first’ approach in general practice in England: speaking to the GP by telephone before making face-to-face appointments |
title | Qualitative study of patient views on a ‘telephone-first’ approach in general practice in England: speaking to the GP by telephone before making face-to-face appointments |
title_full | Qualitative study of patient views on a ‘telephone-first’ approach in general practice in England: speaking to the GP by telephone before making face-to-face appointments |
title_fullStr | Qualitative study of patient views on a ‘telephone-first’ approach in general practice in England: speaking to the GP by telephone before making face-to-face appointments |
title_full_unstemmed | Qualitative study of patient views on a ‘telephone-first’ approach in general practice in England: speaking to the GP by telephone before making face-to-face appointments |
title_short | Qualitative study of patient views on a ‘telephone-first’ approach in general practice in England: speaking to the GP by telephone before making face-to-face appointments |
title_sort | qualitative study of patient views on a ‘telephone-first’ approach in general practice in england: speaking to the gp by telephone before making face-to-face appointments |
topic | General practice / Family practice |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6318515/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30598491 http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2018-026197 |
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