Patient burden_PEC_SikvelandStokoeSymonds.pdf (202.95 kB)
Patient burden during appointment-making telephone calls to GP practices
journal contribution
posted on 2016-04-12, 14:09 authored by Rein Sikveland, Elizabeth Stokoe, Jon SymondsObjective: This study addresses, for the first time, the effectiveness of receptionists handling incoming calls from patients to access General Practice services.
Methods: It is a large-scale qualitative study of three services in the UK. Using conversation analysis, we identified the issue of ‘patient burden’, which we defined based on the trouble patients display pursuing service. We quantified instances of ‘patient burden’ using a coding scheme.
Results: We demonstrate how ‘patient burden’ unfolds in two phases of the telephone calls: (i) following an initial rejection of a patient’s request; and (ii) following a receptionist’s initiation of call closing. Our quantitative analysis shows that the three GP services differ in the frequency of ‘patient burden’ and reveals a correlation between the proportion of ‘patient burden’ and independent national satisfaction scores for these surgeries.
Conclusion: Unlike post-hoc surveys, our analysis of live calls identifies the communicative practices which may constitute patient (dis)satisfaction.
Practice Implications: Through establishing what receptionists handle well or less well in encounters with patients, we propose ways of improving such encounters through training or other forms of intervention.
History
School
- Social Sciences
Department
- Communication, Media, Social and Policy Studies
Published in
Patient Education and CounselingCitation
SIKVELAND, R.O., STOKOE, E. and SYMONDS, J., 2016. Patient burden during appointment-making telephone calls to GP practices. Patient Education and Counseling, 99 (8), pp. 1310-1318.Publisher
© ElsevierVersion
- AM (Accepted Manuscript)
Publisher statement
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Acceptance date
2016-03-24Publication date
2016Notes
This paper was accepted for publication in the journal Patient Education and Counseling and the definitive published version is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pec.2016.03.025.ISSN
0738-3991eISSN
1873-5134Publisher version
Language
- en