Patients' experiences of receiving telephone advice from a GP co-operative

The use of the telephone to deliver health care advice has increased considerably in recent years. Little research has been carried out to explore the experience of patients who receive such advice and its acceptability.

The aim of this study is to describe the expectations of patients, or third party callers, who had contacted a GP out-of-hours co-operative and their satisfaction with telephone advice received.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted by telephone 7-10 days after contact with one inner city GP co-operative.

A total of 47 telephone consultations were followed up with an interview. Of these, 23 (48.9%) callers had expected to be offered a home visit when they called. Reasons for wanting a home visit were either to do with the nature of the condition and its perceived severity, problems in being able to attend the primary care centre and the risks of travel, or because of problems in communicating over the telephone. Satisfaction with telephone consultations centred mostly on the doctor being able to provide reassurance and give adequate time to allay concerns. The most common reasons given for dissatisfaction were the caller feeling that the doctor could not make a correct diagnosis without having seen the patient, or the caller being made to feel that they were wasting the doctor's time. Many patients were anxious about their ability to describe symptoms over the telephone, or understand and follow the advice that they received.

There appears to be a need for patients to be better informed about the service they can expect to receive from GP co-operatives. Recent developments such as NHS Direct may have an influence on the telephone consultation rate to GP co-operatives.