Paediatric telephone consultation--a neglected area of health service delivery.
Telephone enquiries to a large paediatric institution were monitored over a 4 week period. Of the 1764 calls handled during this period (an average of 63 per day), over 75% sought advice regarding symptoms of illness in their children. The commonest were to do with vomiting and diarrhoea, fever, infectious disease, respiratory symptoms and feeding problems. It is suggested that it is no longer appropriate for such calls to be handled in an ad hoc manner as is the custom in most hospitals, but that specific telephone protocols be developed and evaluated to address this important area of paediatric consultation.
D000553:Ambulatory Care / Q000379:methods; D001315:Australia; D002648:Child; D006776:Hospitals, Pediatric; D006782:Hospitals, Special; D006801:Humans; D012017:Referral and Consultation; D013689:Telephone / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*