Unit of Academic Primary Care, Warwick Medical School, University of Warwick, Gibbet Hill, Coventry, CV7 4AL, UK.
Syst Rev. 2021 Jan 13;10(1):25. doi: 10.1186/s13643-021-01576-x.
Telephone-based digital triage is widely used by services that provide urgent care. This involves a call handler or clinician using a digital triage tool to generate algorithm-based care advice, based on a patient's symptoms. Advice typically takes the form of signposting within defined levels of urgency to specific services or self-care advice. Despite wide adoption, there is limited evaluation of its impact on service user experience, service use and clinical outcomes; no previous systematic reviews have focussed on services that utilise digital triage, and its impact on these outcome areas within urgent care. This review aims to address this need, particularly now that telephone-based digital triage is well established in healthcare delivery.
Studies assessing the impact of telephone-based digital triage on service user experience, health care service use and clinical outcomes will be identified through searches conducted in Medline, Embase, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), Web of Science and Scopus. Search terms using words relating to digital triage and urgent care settings (excluding in-hours general practice) will be used. The review will include all original study types including qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods studies; studies published in the last 20 years and studies published in English. Quality assessment of studies will be conducted using the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool (MMAT); a narrative synthesis approach will be used to analyse and summarise findings.
This is the first systematic review to evaluate service user experience, service use and clinical outcomes related to the use of telephone-based digital triage in urgent care settings. It will evaluate evidence from studies of wide-ranging designs. The narrative synthesis approach will enable the integration of findings to provide new insights on service delivery. Models of urgent care continue to evolve rapidly, with the emergence of self-triage tools and national help lines. Findings from this review will be presented in a practical format that can feed into the design of digital triage tools, future service design and healthcare policy.
This systematic review is registered on the international database of prospectively registered systematic reviews in health and social care (PROSPERO 2020 CRD42020178500 ).
提供紧急护理的服务广泛采用基于电话的数字分诊。这涉及到呼叫处理者或临床医生使用数字分诊工具，根据患者的症状生成基于算法的护理建议。建议通常采用在特定紧急服务或自我护理建议的定义级别内进行引导的形式。尽管得到了广泛采用，但对于其对服务用户体验、服务使用和临床结果的影响的评估有限；以前没有系统评价专门针对利用数字分诊的服务及其对紧急护理中这些结果领域的影响。本综述旨在满足这一需求，特别是现在基于电话的数字分诊已经在医疗保健服务中得到很好的应用。
通过在 Medline、Embase、护理和联合健康文献累积索引 (CINAHL)、Web of Science 和 Scopus 中进行搜索，将确定评估基于电话的数字分诊对服务用户体验、医疗保健服务使用和临床结果影响的研究。将使用与数字分诊和紧急护理环境（不包括工作时间内的一般实践）相关的字词的搜索词。综述将包括所有原始研究类型，包括定性、定量和混合方法研究；在过去 20 年中发表的研究和用英文发表的研究。使用混合方法评估工具 (MMAT) 对研究进行质量评估；将采用叙述性综合方法来分析和总结研究结果。
这是第一项评估基于电话的数字分诊在紧急护理环境中的使用与服务用户体验、服务使用和临床结果相关的系统评价。它将评估来自设计范围广泛的研究的证据。叙述性综合方法将能够整合研究结果，提供有关服务交付的新见解。紧急护理的模式继续快速发展，出现了自我分诊工具和国家帮助热线。本综述的结果将以实用的格式呈现，以便为数字分诊工具的设计、未来的服务设计和医疗保健政策提供信息。
本系统评价在国际卫生和社会保健前瞻性注册系统评价数据库（PROSPERO 2020 CRD42020178500）中进行了注册。
