Design
fever, ill
A prospective quality improvement study design was used, where a group of experienced nurse call-handlers invited parents of young children to participate. In all calls matching the inclusion criteria and where the parent consented to participation, the call-handlers were instructed to perform standard telephone triage in one call and video triage in the next call and so on, to get two comparable groups. In that way, the two groups would optimally only differ by triage method. After all included calls, the call-handlers filled out an electronic questionnaire about the call and their experiences and sent a questionnaire to the participating parents by text message. The study period lasted from September 1, 2019, to January 31, 2020. Children aged 3 months to 5 years with fever were eligible for inclusion. It was not mandatory that the parents had measured the temperature, even though they were encouraged to do so by the call-handlers. Exclusion criteria were foreign telephone number, previous participation in the project or neither Danish- nor English-speaking parent. The present study used a similar set-up as the previously described video triage study concerning respiratory symptoms [Moreover, the study also included the parents’ DOW before and after having talked to the call-handler, and both scores were reported in questionnaires In addition, the call-handlers rated their DOW of the child immediately after each call. DOW was registered in the survey question “On a scale from 1 to 5, where 1 is minimally worried and 5 is maximally worried, how worried are you that the child is seriously ill?”. The design of the study is illustrated in Fig. Study designThe remaining survey responses of both call-handlers and parents and the actual surveys can be found in a previous article [The technological set-up for video streaming was provided by GoodSAM: Instant-on-Scene (