For your ears only

Telephone triage and telephone advice services present new opportunities for medical services to advise on health care matters. The objective of the study presented in this thesis is to investigate to what extent the process of telephone care at out-of-hours centres in the Netherlands is executed in accordance with accepted professional standards. Accepted professional standards incorporate criteria for communication skills, for clinical management and the quality of the report of the call. To assess the quality of telephone communication and of the reports a special assessment tool was developed. It is called the RICE rating list.

Hay Derkx (24-9-1949) worked as physician in Malawi for 3 years and as a general practitioner at Berg en Terblijt. In 2001 he became involved in the development of "The Health line", a medical call centre. As a result of this experience he became increasingly fascinated by the phenomenon of telephone triage which resulted in this thesis.