Clinician and patient perspectives of telephone consultations during covid-19 pandemic

ABSTRACT

Introduction COVID-19 has significantly reduced clinicians practice to undertake face to face outpatient clinics and telephone consultations have become the new normal. We have undertaken a survey of clinicians and patients opinions on telephone consultations. Methods Survey questionnaires were filled by the clinicians who had undertaken the clinics and subsequently patients had phone calls asking how they felt about the consultation. Consultations were performed between Mar 2020-May 2020 and we obtained responses from 319 clinicians and patients. Results Clinician's feedback-36.5% felt they were unable to clinically assess the patients. 12% of patients had to be telephoned more than once as no initial response was obtained. Negative comments included Patient not had investigations by time of consultation;patient was not expecting a phone call, difficult telephone conversation, unable to communicate because of patient hearing problems or poor phone line, unable to communicate as patient had learning disability or mental illness, language barrier and family translating for patient. Patient's feedback-44% felt seeing clinician face to face is better than telephone consultations. 29% felt telephone clinics are better and 28% were unsure. Overall positive feedback noted in 71.5%. Conclusions In our cohort of patients during the COVID-19 pandemic, patients were more satisfied than clinicians with telephone consultations. This survey also highlighted the positives and negatives related to undertaking telephone consultations. We need to address the negative points as it is expected that the telephone consultations will continue for the foreseeable future even after face to face consultations are resumed.