Paediatric calls to an inner city accident and emergency department: service demand and advice given

Patients routinely call both Accident and Emergency (A & E) departments and General Practice for advice. Many of these calls concern children. In the UK, telephone calls for advice made to A & E departments are usually dealt with by nursing staff in an informal manner. This paper focuses on telephone calls concerning children received in a busy inner city department. Data were collected using a Telephone Consultation Record proforma (TCR) developed to document all calls to the A & E department. There were a total of 597 calls to the A & E department documented during the study period of which 218 (37%) concerned paediatric patients. The majority of calls were concerning children under the age of 5. One-third of callers were given self-care advice. This paper reports on the volume of calls, the nature of patients' problems and the outcome in terms of the advice given to the caller. The implications of the findings are discussed. Given the current demand for telephone advice, A & E departments should examine the nature and demand for telephone advice and explore methods of providing training and support to staff carrying out this role.