Original articlePerceptions of physicians and patients with organic and functional gastrointestinal diagnoses
Section snippets
Study sample
Patient-initiated night and weekend telephone calls made to 4 first-year gastroenterology fellows on rotating call at a university-based fellowship program between November 1999 and February 2000 were evaluated by questionnaire. All calls received during weekdays after 5:00 pm and before 8:00 am and on weekends from 5:00 pm Friday to 8:00 am Monday were eligible. Although most calls were recorded, an unknown number of calls received in the early morning hours were not.
Study administration
All first-year
Clinical and demographic features
Of 104 questionnaires that were matched between patients and fellows, 1 fellow questionnaire was incomplete, leaving 103 assessable questionnaires. All 4 fellows were Caucasian men aged in their early 30s. Of patients, 69% were women, 65% (N = 66) had an organic diagnosis, and 35% (N = 36) had a functional diagnosis. One patient telephoned on 2 occasions. There was a greater proportion of women with functional diagnoses (86% women with functional vs. 58% women with organic diagnoses; P <
Discussion
As the Western health care system seeks to streamline the cost and efficiency of patient care, use of telephone communication may gain increasing importance. To date, there are only a small number of studies relating to the nature of after-hours telephone calls and attitudes and behaviors of physicians accepting them. A limited number of studies from primary care practices indicated that about one quarter of primary care communications are through the telephone1 and relate primarily to
Acknowledgements
The authors thank Albena Halpert, M.D., for helpful comments.
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