Improving telephone consultation skills in clinicians

The ability to consult by telephone is now an integral part of any modern patient-centred healthcare system and the British Medical Association (BMA) has provided guidance for general practitioners (Consulting in the modern world, which was published in 2001). The BMA concludes that "telephone consultations when correctly conducted can be considered to be safe and acceptable practice". In a protocol for a Cochrane Review, Rumant Grewal and colleagues explain how they will identify and measure the effectiveness of interventions that aim to improve the clinician telephone consultation skills of clinicians. Grewal and colleagues believe that their review will provide evidence about the most effective interventions for improving telephone consultation skills and thereby improve both quality of care and patients' experiences of their health care.