Implementing telephone triage in general practice: a process evaluation of a cluster randomised controlled trial

BMC Primary Care

Table 1 Overview of the process evaluation practices

	Triage type	List size of practice and location	Triage sessions (mode of delivery)	Average (Stdev) number of triage calls completed by practice per day*	Overview of reported triage experience**
Practice 1	Nurse	9215 Suburban	Two nurses in morning only; one at a time	17.41 (6.98)	Very negative
Practice 2	Nurse	11267 Suburban	Two nurses each morning; in parallel	32.21 (5.91)	Quite positive
Practice 3	Nurse	5949 Rural	One nurse, morning & afternoon	6.03 (2.81)	Positive
Practice 4	Nurse	7981 Suburban	1-2 nurses morning & afternoon, switching to morning only	10.32 (3.81)	Positive
Practice 5	GP	5500 Rural	All GPs for 1.5 hrs in morning only; followed by duty triage GP	14.50 (4.68)	Mixed
Practice 6	GP	10622 Urban	One duty GP at a time on rota, also seeing triaged patients	8.88 (3.97)	Mixed
Practice 7	GP	11098 Suburban	Pre-surgery triage for all GPs, followed by duty doctor	34.08 (13.65)	Mainly positive
Practice 8	GP	5927 Urban	Duty doctor, on a rota	7.05 (3.90)	Positive

*Number of triage calls made by practice is not equivalent to number of same-day appointment requests received. A proportion of requests would have met the ESTEEM exclusion criteria¹ and were therefore not included on the list of patients to call back.
**The classification of practices in this category was based on the summary of participant responses for each practice produced as part of the framework analysis.

ISSN: 2731-4553