A University of New South Wales study has revealed that people who sought medical advice through a telephone helpline rarely followed the advice given to them.
Despite registered nurses informing patients not to attend, over half of them went to a hospital in Perth anyway.
The author of the study, Associate Professor Patrick Bolton, argued that the telephone help line may not be the best use of limited funding allocated to health.
Ulf Steinvorth
Doctor
The study also concludes that 3/4 of self-referrals by patients to the Emergency Department are appropriate, the same percentage as the referrals by the telephone helpline, indicating that patients might be well suited to give themselves medical advice and that they might to the contrary do rather well to ignore 'medical advice' when it goes against their gut instinct.
Sue Ieraci
Public hospital clinician
The same results have been shown over and over. There are studies from both Perth and the Gold Coast that show that telephone advice lines either don't reduce ED attendances or may increase them.
IN addition, the staffing of these advice lines robs the hospital of the very staff who could actually attend to the patients seeking care.
Why, then, do we keep being given this "strategy"?
There is a misperception that EDs are full of people who, theoretically, shouldn't be there". Again, this has also been disproven many times. People who need simple reassurance or have relatively simple problems are easily dealt with, take little time and don't occupy hospital beds - it is the complex elderly who are filling our hospitals. WHere else should they go when they get acutely sick?
Diana Taylor
retired psychotherapist
I have used the help line several times. The advice I was given was most helpful. Please do not remove this service just because some people do not follow the advice.