Initial Specialist Telephone Consultation With New Patients in Secondary Care

Respiratory Diseases Clinical Trial

Official title:

Telephone Consultations for New Patients Being Referred to a Specialist Respiratory Outpatient Clinic

Clinical Trial Details — Status: Completed

Administrative data

• NCT number: NCT00988000
• Other study ID #: NHLICX07Q060519
• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Start date: June 2009
• Est. completion date: April 2010

Study information

• Verified date: October 2019
• Source: Imperial College London
• Contact: n/a
• Is FDA regulated: No
• Study type: Interventional

Clinical Trial Summary

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.

Description:

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.

Recruitment information / eligibility

• Status: Completed
• Enrollment: 157
• Est. completion date: April 2010
• Est. primary completion date: April 2010
• Accepts healthy volunteers: No
• Gender: All
• Age group: 18 Years and older

Eligibility

Inclusion Criteria:

• All new adult general respiratory referrals from primary care

Exclusion Criteria:

• Follow-up patients

Related Conditions & MeSH terms

• Respiration Disorders
• Respiratory Diseases
• Respiratory Tract Diseases

Intervention

Other:
• telephone consultation
alternative to face to face consultation for new referrals
• No intervention
no alternative to face to face consultation

Locations

Country	Name	City	State
United Kingdom	Imperial College at Charing Cross campus	London

Sponsors (2)

Lead Sponsor	Collaborator
Imperial College London	The Dunhill Medical Trust

Country where clinical trial is conducted

United Kingdom, 

Outcome

Type	Measure	Description	Time frame	Safety issue
Primary	Patient Satisfaction of the Alternative Consultation	Patient Satisfaction assessed by MISS scale, Medical interview satisfaction score. The score 0-7, 0 means dissatisfaction, higher scores indicate higher satisfaction.	First clinic appointment (Month 0) and Follow-up appointment (6 months
Secondary	Number of Required Investigations	reduction in number of required investigations	0-6 months