Telephone communication between practice nurses and older patients with long term conditions - a systematic review

Background and aims Long term conditions are a significant health problem faced by older people worldwide. Telephone communication is often used to deliver health care to patients and is an important tool in improving access to care. Previous research has shown that primary health care nurses communicate with patients by telephone, but little is known about the way in which telephone communication can be used to benefit older patients with long term conditions. The aims of this review were to identify the range and scope of telephone use between practice nurses working in primary health care and older people with long term conditions, explore which elements of this communication has been successful, and determine whether older people see telephone communication as useful for their needs. Methods A systematic search of the literature was conducted through CINAHL, Medline, Web of Science and EMBASE between July and August 2015. Included were English language articles containing older adults, primary care nurses and both qualitative and quantitative designs. Results Five studies met the inclusion criteria. All were intervention studies, and none looked at routine telephone communication between nurse and patient. Most studies showed that telephone based interventions were successful in improving pre-determined disease-specific health indicators. Conclusions All telephone communication interventions in this review focused on a specific long term condition, which they aimed to help patients self-manage. While all studies' samples included older patients, they did not consider them separately in relation to the effectiveness of the intervention. What was also lacking was the patient perspective regarding effectiveness in all but one study.