Safety, efficiency and health-related quality of telephone triage conducted by general practitioners, nurses, or physicians in out-of-hours primary care: a quasi-experimental study using the Assessment of Quality in Telephone Triage (AQTT) to assess audio-recorded telephone calls

Table 4 Baseline distribution of patient and call characteristics, stratified by triage professional group

Triage professional	GP (n = 423)	Nurse (n = 430)	Physician (n = 441)
Patient characteristics
Sex, % (n) ^£
Male	42.8 (181)	37.9 (163)	47.2 (208)
Female	57.2 (242)	62.1 (267)	52.8 (233)
Age group in years, % (n)
0–4	20.3 (86)	23.6 (101)	21.9 (96)
5–17	15.8 (67)	13.3 (57)	14.8 (65)
18–39	29.6 (125)	31.5 (135)	30.6 (134)
40–64	21.8 (92)	20.6 (88)	20.1 (88)
≥65	12.5 (53)	11.0 (47)	12.6 (55)
Call characteristics
Time of call^a, % (n)
Weekend	51.6 (218)	51.2 (220)	50.3 (222)
Not weekend	48.5 (205)	48.8 (210)	49.7 (219
Day	22.2 (94)	22.6 (97)	21.1 (93)
Evening	61.5 (260)	60.9 (262)	61.5 (271)
Night	16.3 (69)	16.5 (71)	17.5 (77)
Length of call, min and sec (SD - sec)^£
Mean	2 min 57 s (105) ^b	4 min 44 s (168)*	4 min 1 s (146)*

£ Indicating a significant difference (p < 0.05) between all three groups of triage professionals, using chi-square test for categorical variables and Kruskal-Wallis for length of call
*Significant difference between nurses or physicians in pairwise comparison with GPs as reference group (Bonferroni adjusted p < 0.025), using chi-squared test (all categorical variables) and Mann-Whitney U-test (length of call)
^aTime of call: Weekend = Friday 4 pm - Sunday midnight; Not weekend = Monday 0 am - Friday 8 am; ^bAvailable only for 352 of 423 calls from GPC

ISSN: 2731-4553