‘If I didn’t trust Swedish Healthcare Direct, I would never call’ – views of making pediatric health calls

Abstract

The focus of the presented research is parents' expectations and experiences of calling Swedish Healthcare Direct (SHD) regarding pediatric health issues. Telenursing is a rapidly expanding service and SHD handles up to 2.4 million pediatric health calls yearly. Mothers make the majority of the calls and reportedly receive self-care advice more than fathers. Parents' views are important for the development and safe use of telenursing health services. The study is qualitative, with an exploratory and descriptive design. Twenty-one interviews with parents were analysed using content analysis. According to the interviewees, the decision to contact SHD or not is influenced by their degree of worry or trust in the service. Calls are carefully prepared, and who will call is often predetermined and affected by gender. Parents want to be given a chance to speak first in their communication with telenurses. They want to be listened to carefully and to be accorded respect, to have their needs fully explored and to have their concerns relieved. Most parents follow telenurses' recommendations, a few exclusively. Some primarily trust their own intuition. Learning is frequent, implying the public health potential of calls, not least for foreign-born callers. Exploring parents' expectations provides insight into parents' worries, potential to increase parents' learning and may develop their trust in telenurses' recommendations. Telenurses' awareness of gender impact can further develop the telenursing health service in providing safe care on equal terms for a vulnerable patient group, children.

Telephone nurses' communication and response to callers' concern—a mixed methods study

“…In two of the responses the telephone nurses asked for the caller's opinion. Concern is a common reason for calling telephone advice services and especially parents have a great trust for the advices given by telenurses (Kaminsky et al, 2013). Within the U.K service NHD Direct, parental concern is considered a risk factor in the CDSS, with the recommendation of a referral to a GP.…”

“…This group is growing, as healthcare is regarded as a service like any other. However, recent studies show how callers trust telephone nurses advice even if advices given differ from their own expectations and preferred level of care (Ernesater et al, 2012;Kaminsky et al, 2013). Telephone nurses working in these services need high communicative competence and an ability to listen, as their assessments and advice are based solely on verbal communication, and they cannot see the caller (Farquharson et al, 2011;Greenberg, 2009;Wahlberg et al, 2005).…”

When all other doors are closed: Telenurses' experiences of encountering care seekers with mental illnesses

“…Trust has been shown to be of utmost importance for care seekers' concordance with and compliance to the advice given (Kaminsky et al . ; Winneby et al . ).…”

Educating Swedish telenurses to improve caller experience: Reflections on a pilot study

“…This may have been a way of getting a second-opinion, or may have been an expression of not being reassured by advice given by the telenurses. It is important for telenurses to not only triage callers' medical needs, but also respond to emotions and concern [46] . By not acknowledging such aspects they distance themselves from callers in order to appear more professional [45] .…”

“…This was not included in the design of the original study, as the focus of interest at the time was outcome on a group level. However, a recently published study on parents' expectations and experiences of calling SHD gives a deeper understanding of how one group of callers, parents, view their dialogues with telenurses [46] . Lessons have been learned from the present pilot study that need to be taken into account in future and more large scale studies.…”