Effectiveness of a Curriculum in Telephone Medicine

Background: Telephone medicine is an important but seldom-taught part of generalist physician's practices. Surveyed residents have expressed discomfort with this aspect of ambulatory care. Description: To determine if a telephone-medicine curriculum improves telephone- medicine skills of internal-medicine residents. Evaluation: Residents at West Virginia University (WVU) and the Moses Cone Memorial Hospital (N = 29) tested a telephone-medicine curriculum. They completed pre- and postcurriculum objective structured clinical examinations (OSCEs). Half of the WVU residents underwent the post-OSCE immediately and half after 6 months. All residents completed daily evaluations of the curriculum. Conclusions: The post-OSCE scores improved significantly(ps for each group <. 01). Means of daily evaluations were 4.2 � 4.7 (on 1� 5 scales) for curricular content and delivery. The residents felt significantly better able to manage patients' calls after 2 sessions (p <. 01). Improvement was seen in the telephone OSCE ...