Caller self-care decisions following teletriage advice

To examine caller self-care decisions following teletriage advice provided by nurses.

The use of teletriage is gaining popularity as one way of enhancing capacity for self-care. Research from several countries suggests that teletriage reduces the use of other healthcare services without compromising safety. However, there is little or no research related to how often self-care advice is provided and whether or not callers follow the advice.

A descriptive survey design was used with a random sample of 312 callers who were advised by a teletriage nurse to engage in self-care.

Callers were randomly selected from all calls to a teletriage service each day of the month for nine months. Data were collected using a researcher-developed interview guide and analysed using a variety of inferential statistics for forced choice questions and content analysis for open-ended questions.

The majority of callers who were advised to engage in self-care reported doing so. Callers with greater self-efficacy and satisfaction with the nurse interaction were more likely to follow advice to self-care. All callers would call the teletriage service again for the same or a different issue.

Teletriage callers were confident in the advice provided and were willing to continue to use the service.

This study indicates that teletriage programmes are a cost-effective way of addressing self-care needs of individuals who might otherwise visit an emergency department.