Completeness and quality of text paging for subspecialty consult requests. Issue 1150 (20th August 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Chu, Chi D; Tuot, Delphine S; Harrison, James D; Duong, Jonathan; Luxenberg, Adam; Khanna, Raman R
• Is Part Of: Postgraduate medical journal. Volume 97:Issue 1150(2021)
• Page Start: 511
• Page End: 514
• Publication Date: 2020-08-20
• Subjects: Health services administration & management -- quality in healthcare -- medical education & training; Medicine -- Periodicals; 610
• DOI: 10.1136/postgradmedj-2020-137624
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0032-5473

Abstract

ABSTRACT: It is unclear whether previously developed frameworks for effective consultation apply to requests initiated by alphanumeric text page. We assessed a random sample of 210 text paged consult requests for communication of previously described 'essential elements' for effective consultation: reason for consult, level of urgency and requester contact information. Overall page quality was evaluated on a 5-point Likert scale. Over 90% of text paged consult requests included contact information and reason for consult; 14% indicated level of urgency. In ordinal logistic regression, reason for consult was most strongly associated with quality (OR 22.4; 95% CI 8.1 to 61.7), followed by callback number (OR 6.2; 95% CI 0.8 to 49.5), caller's name (OR 5.0; 95% CI 1.9 to 13.1) and level of urgency (OR 3.3; 95% CI 1.6 to 6.7). Results suggest that text paged consult requests often include most informational elements, and that urgency, often missing, may not be as 'essential' for text pages as it was once thought to be.