PO41A NURSE LED TELEPHONE CLINIC IMPROVES PATIENT WAITING TIMES AND EXPERIENCE

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: Kings College Hospital provides Neuro-oncology surgical treatment and follow up for the South East England with a catchment of 4.1 million. Much of the Clinical Nurse Specialist's (CNS) work is via telephone, predominantly direct patient contact but also providing expert advice to primary and secondary healthcare professionals. Due to clinical commitments, CNSs are often not able to take calls as they come in. Administrative staff send emails to the joint address, resulting in a high volume of email traffic, no one CNS responsible for returning calls, and poor patient satisfaction regarding response time. METHOD: In December 2013 a telephone clinic was created on PIMMS. Administrative staff book patients in for a call back, either that afternoon or on a specific day. Each CNS had an allocated clinic day and can book patients for future calls, to check the response to a medication change for example. This also captured the huge volume of work the team conducted via phone which had previously been unrecorded. RESULTS: Numbers in the telephone clinic have steadily increased in size since its inception. Some months more patients were reviewed in the telephone clinic than in either of the Neuro-oncology clinics. (N.B. Full tables and figures will be provided in the advent of a presentation). CONCLUSION: The clinic has created a reliable way of ensuring patients are given high quality support and advice over the telephone. It also captures the amount of work generated from a single call. It does not however capture the work load of calls into the office when patients are put straight through. The CNS team are aware there is gross under reporting of call volume and and are looking at ways to improve this.