Impact of caller's degree-of-worry on triage response in out-of-hours telephone consultations: a randomized controlled trial.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Telephone triage entails assessment of urgency and direction of flow in out-of-hours (OOH) services, while visual cues are inherently lacking. Triage tools are recommended but current tools fail to provide systematic assessment of the caller's perspective. Research demonstrated that callers can scale their degree-of-worry (DOW) in a telephone contact with OOH services, but its impact on triage response is undetermined. The aim of this study was to investigate the association between call-handlers' awareness of the caller's DOW and the telephone triage response.

Methods

A randomized controlled trial at a Danish OOH service using telephone triage with quantitative analyses and qualitative process evaluation. Prior to contact with a call-handler, callers were asked t

SUBMITTER: Gamst-Jensen H 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6458647 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature