Objectives: To assess the amount of telephone activity in outpatient pediatric practice.
Methods: Seventy-nine pediatricians belonging to a continuing medical education group (Arepege) prospectively recorded data about all the telephone calls they took personally for 3 days, from 4 to 6 December 2000. They noted the number of calls each day and their duration, the caller, the reason for and the response to each call.
Results: In 3 days, the 79 pediatricians received 4413 calls, for a mean of 19 calls daily for each practitioner. The calls were brief, 86% of them lasting less than 2 min; each pediatrician spent an average of 26 min a day on the telephone; most calls (82%) came from children's mothers. The reasons for the calls were: request for appointment (1035 calls, 23.5%), request for advice not associated with an acute disease (1416 calls, 32%), the onset of acute symptoms (1961 calls, 44.5%). An appointment was made in 26% of the cases for which the reason for the call was illness.
Conclusion: Pediatric private practice involves substantial telephone activity, which generates no healthcare costs, but does present risks that might be attenuated by the use of appropriate algorithms for conducting these telephone interviews.