Safety and effectiveness of nurse telephone consultation in out of hours primary care

BMJ 1999;318:1137 ( 24 April )

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Safety and effectiveness of nurse telephone consultation in out of hours primary care

Two interventions were combined as one

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Two interventions were combined as one

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR $---$ Lattimer et al report a randomised controlled trial to show the safety and effectiveness of nurse telephone consultationsin out of hours primary care.¹ I accept that the results showeda reduced workload for general practitioners from the nurse intervention,probably at an increased cost. For methodological reasons, however,I am less certain whether the results showsafety.

Lattimer et al report that during intervention periods, 49.8% of the calls could be managed by the nurse alone without referralto a doctor. This implies that 50.2% of the calls were assessedtwice: once by an experienced and specially trained nurse usinga systematic assessment with the aid of decision support softwareand then by the general practitioner in attendance. I would expectthat the improved diagnosis and management in this subgroup wouldlead to much better clinical outcomes than in the control group,which had only one assessment . . . [Full text of this article]

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Relevant Article

Safety and effectiveness of nurse telephone consultation in out of hours primary care: randomised controlled trial: Val Lattimer, Steve George, Felicity Thompson, Eileen Thomas, Mark Mullee, Joanne Turnbull, Helen Smith, Michael Moore, Hugh Bond, and Alan Glasper
BMJ 1998 317: 1054-1059. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]