Evaluation of an educational programme for telephone advisers in primary health care

Telephone advisers, usually registered nurses, have a very important role in the Swedish primary health care service. In order to improve this service, a special educational programme has been worked out for registered nurses working at a Swedish health centre. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate this educational programme at one of the health centres. The quality of the telephone advice was evaluated by a blind observer. After the educational programme the quality of advice was improved. Among the participating nurses, the confidence and the satisfaction with the work increased after the educational programme.