Patient satisfaction with general surgery telephone consultations during the COVID-19 pandemic: a single surgeon...

COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the development and use of telemedicine in surgical practice. Here we set out to understand patient satisfaction with the use of telephone consultation in the general surgical clinic and preference over face-to-face consultation.

A prospective cohort study was carried out for consecutive patients seen in a general surgery telephone clinic by a single surgeon in a district general hospital in the UK from 1^st September 2021 to 10^th March 2022. Demographic data was collected from electronic patient records. At the end of the consultation patients were asked to: 1) score their satisfaction with the telephone consultation on a 5-point Likert Scale; and 2) whether they preferred telephone consultations to face-to-face appointments. It was noted if a patient required a further face-to-face consultation in addition to the telephone consultation.

The study included 245 patients who were reviewed by telephone consultation. Most patients (59.6%; N.=146) gave the telephone consultation the highest satisfaction score with a further 31% (N.=76) scoring it as a 4 out of 5. Only 2.8% of patients said they would have preferred a face-to-face consultation and gave a median satisfaction score of 2 (IQR 2-3) compared to 5 (IQR 4-5) in those who preferred telephone consultations (P<0.001).

Telemedicine is associated with high levels of patient satisfaction regardless of patient age or gender. Lower rates of satisfaction are associated with the need for further face-to-face follow-up. If telemedicine is to remain a permanent part of surgical practice, disease specific protocols for its use are required.