Table 3.

Respondents’ level of agreement with themes identified in the literature on doctors’ experience of telephone consultations relative to face-to-face consultations

Theme identified in the literature	Consultant (%)	NCHD (%)
Diagnostic
Less confident in making a diagnosis	100	86
Lack of visual cues affected patient assessment	92	100
Risk assessment was more difficult	92	86
More difficult to consider discharging a patient	67	71
Did not feel that undergraduate education prepared me for phone consultations	92	86
Less confident prescribing medication	33	43
Therapeutic alliance
More difficult to establish atmosphere of openness and trust with new patients	100	79
Patients disclosed sensitive information more freely	17	7
Roles and boundaries were more difficult to establish	67	21
Lack of visual cues affected ability to establish rapport	67	57
Ethical issues
Medicolegal issues becoming more of a concern	42	64
Increased concern around patient confidentiality	33	29
Adequate level of supervision	42	71
Technical issues
Technical issues such as the quality of the phone line were an issue	83	71
Assessing those who had issues with English language fluency was more difficult	86	75
Assessing those with cognitive impairment became more of an issue	100	100
Assessing those with hearing deficits became more of an issue	78	67
Practical issues
Offered increased flexibility in the working day	83	86
Consultation times were shorter	67	79
Concluding interview was less difficult	25	57

The number of consultants who agree with each statement is shown as a percentage of the total number of consultant respondents (n = 12). Likewise, the number of NCHDs who agree with each statement is shown as a percentage of the total number of NCHD respondents (n = 14).