Consultations with patients by hospital consultants are organised today in a manner which is barely dissimilar from that offered 30 or 40 years ago. Whilst some attempts to improve this process, such as Choose and Book, shorter waiting times and patients' receiving a copy of the correspondence sent to their general practitioner (GP) have improved the situation, there has been little radical change and little thought given to the patient experience.
The investigators wish to investigate whether patients' experience of attending respiratory outpatient clinics can be improved by a pre-clinic telephone call with a specialist thereby reducing the number of attendances at the hospital for appointments and investigations and improving overall patient satisfaction.
Primary Outcome Measures:
- Patient Satisfaction [ Time Frame: 2010 ] [ Designated as safety issue: No ]
Secondary Outcome Measures:
- Patient costs [ Time Frame: 2010 ] [ Designated as safety issue: No ]
- Patient views about outpatient experience [ Time Frame: 2010 ] [ Designated as safety issue: No ]
- Reduction in number of required hospital attendances [ Time Frame: 2010 ] [ Designated as safety issue: No ]
| Estimated Enrollment: |
100 |
| Study Start Date: |
June 2009 |
| Estimated Study Completion Date: |
June 2010 |
| Estimated Primary Completion Date: |
March 2010 (Final data collection date for primary outcome measure) |
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Alternative appointment system
Alternative of telephone consultation (instead of face to face) offered as an initial consultation to new referrals
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Other: telephone consultation
alternative to face to face consultation for new referrals
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This study will investigate whether taking a new patient's history over the telephone permits better selection and arrangement of investigations prior to or synchronous with the first face to face consultation, with the potential to reduce the number of visits the patient has to make to the hospital.
Patients will be offered an initial telephone consultation by post and may opt-in or out of the study. Those having a telephone consultation would have this booked for a specific time and date and the patient would be sent an appropriate information leaflet regarding this. After the telephone consultation patients receive a summary of the consultation and details of any investigations and appointments booked by the research nurse. Patients who did not respond to the initial invitation letter within seven days or who declined to participate would be sent a routine appointment. All patients would asked to complete the MISS-21 questionnaire.
Purpose
