Trial reportBMJ quality & safety2015
Exploring demographic and lifestyle associations with patient experience following telephone triage by a primary care doctor or nurse: secondary analyses from a cluster randomised controlled trial.
Trial report in BMJ quality & safety, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 21 citations in OpenAlex.
- Attributes of family physician encounters valued by older adults: a systematic review.BMC primary care · 2025Pooled it
- Using telehealth consultations for healthcare provision to patients from non-Indigenous racial/ethnic minorities: a systematic review.Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA · 2022Pooled it
- Nurses as substitutes for doctors in primary care.The Cochrane database of systematic reviews · 2018Pooled it
- The Use of Triage in Primary Care in the UK: An Integrative Review and Narrative Synthesis.Journal of advanced nursing · 2026Review
- Uses of Virtual Care in Primary Care: Scoping Review.Journal of medical Internet research · 2025Article
- Access systems in general practice: a systematic scoping review.The British journal of general practice : the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners · 2024Article
- Building a performance measurement framework for telephone triage services in Finland: a consensus-making study based on nominal group technique.Scandinavian journal of trauma, resuscitation and emergency medicine · 2024Article
- Identifying performance indicators to measure overall performance of telephone triage - a scoping review.Scandinavian journal of primary health care · 2024Article
- Impact of a telephone triage service for non-critical emergencies in Switzerland: A cross-sectional study.PloS one · 2021Article
- Characteristics of service users and provider organisations associated with experience of out of hours general practitioner care in England: population based cross sectional postal questionnaire survey.BMJ (Clinical research ed.) · 2015Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
11 authors at 4 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundThe ESTEEM trial was a cluster randomised controlled trial that compared two telephone triage management systems (general practitioner (GP) or a nurse supported by computer decision support software) with usual care, in response to a request for same-day consultation in general practice.
aimTo investigate associations between trial patients' demographic, health, and lifestyle characteristics, and their reported experiences of care.
settingRecruitment of 20 990 patients occurred between May 2011 and December 2012 in 42 GP practices in England (13 GP triage, 15 nurse triage, 14 usual care).
methodPatients reported their experiences via a postal questionnaire issued 4 weeks after their initial request for a same-day consultation. Overall satisfaction, ease of accessing medical help/advice, and convenience of care were analysed using linear hierarchical modelling.
resultsQuestionnaires were returned by 12 132 patients (58%). Older patients reported increased overall satisfaction compared with patients aged 25-59 years, but patients aged 16-24 years reported lower satisfaction. Compared with white patients, patients from ethnic minorities reported lower satisfaction in all three arms, although to a lesser degree in the GP triage arm. Patients from ethnic minorities reported higher satisfaction in the GP triage than in usual care, whereas white patients reported higher satisfaction with usual care. Patients unable to take time away from work or who could only do so with difficulty reported lower satisfaction across all three trial arms.
conclusionsPatient characteristics, such as age, ethnicity and ability to attend their practice during work hours, were associated with their experiences of care following a same-day consultation request in general practice. Telephone triage did not increase satisfaction among patients who were unable to attend their practice during working hours. TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: ISCRTN20687662.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.