Nurses developed skills to manage interaction with callers in order to compensate for the absence of visibility. Skills were based on their professional backgrounds and experience and developed in an ad hoc way. Further research could examine the efficacy of these strategies, and be a prerequisite to adding them to training programmes.

Training in mental health can lead to increases in confidence and a change in attitudes and would be beneficial for all nurses working in NHS Direct and in other primary care fields. It would also be beneficial to repeat the study with a larger number of nurses and after a longer period of time to assess the long-term effects of training.

Objectives: To provide an objective assessment on callers' compliance with NHS Direct advice to attend an accident and emergency (A&E) department. Methods: A representative three week period in May 2000 was investigated. During this period there were no health scares, major health campaigns, or bank holidays that may have affected the call rate. NHS Direct callers who were advised to attend A&E were identified. Data from the four A&E departments for the same three week period and two additional days were searched and matched to NHS Direct data by surname, date of birth, and post code. This process created three groups: (1) callers triaged to A&E who attended, (2) callers triaged to A&E who did not attend, (3) callers with different triage outcome who attended A&E. The age, sex, relationship of caller, time of call, and distance to nearest A&E were compared for groups (1) and (2). Results: Just less than two third of callers triaged to A&E attended with the same presenting complaint. There were no statistically significant differences between group (1) and (2) in terms of age, sex, relationship of caller, time of call, and distance to A&E. A small number of callers (2.4%) were identified as being given other advice and attending A&E for the same presenting complaint. This group took significantly longer to attend A&E than group (1) (χ 2 =139.01, df=7, p<0.001). Conclusions: Assessing levels of compliance is difficult. These findings suggest that NHS Direct may have comparatively high levels of compliance compared with other similar services. However, using the single triage outcome as the means of identifying the advice given may oversimplify the range of possible advice given. The delay in attending A&E for the group of callers who were given other advice may indicate they had tried other actions. Further larger studies are needed to assess the appropriateness of referrals through investigation of clinical outcomes.

Objective: To evaluate an out of hours cooperative of general practitioners compared with a deputising service. Design: Observational study of two services in overlapping geographical areas. Setting: A general practice cooperative in Kensington, Chelsea, and Westminster and a deputising service operating in that area and the neighbouring area of Brent and Harrow. Subjects: All patients contacting a doctor at either service in an eight week period beginning 1 September 1995. Main outcome measures: Patients' age and sex; rates of home visiting, telephone advice, and attendance at a primary centre; hospital admission rates; prescribing rates; times of patient calls; and response times. Results: Data were collected on 5812 patient contacts. Doctors from the cooperative visited 32.0% (1253/ 3920) of patients, offered telephone advice to 57.8% (2267), and saw 7.1% (278) of patients at the primary care centre. By contrast, the deputising service visited 76.3% (1444/1892) of patients and gave telephone advice to 19.3% (365). Doctors from the cooperative prescribed drugs to fewer patients (37.6%; 1473/3915) than did the deputising service (51.7%; 941/1821) (odds ratio 0.56 (95% confidence interval 0.50 to 0.63) adjusted for age and sex) and admitted 8.7% (339/ 3888) of patients to hospital compared with 6.8% (128/1889) from the deputising service (odds ratio 1.30 (1.05 to 1.61) adjusted for age and sex). Response times for the deputising service were faster (median time to visit 65 minutes) than for the cooperative (median time to visit 75 minutes) but the time to first contact with a doctor was shorter for the cooperative because most people initially received telephone advice. Conclusions: The cooperative in this study dealt with patient contacts very differently from the way the deputising service dealt with contacts, fewer patients being visited and fewer receiving prescriptions. The data presented enable other out of hours services to compare their own performance using a standard data collection and analysis program.

NHS Direct is an important service to parents of young children and can provide advice about when contact with another service is necessary to those who traditionally worry about this.

Calls to NHS Direct rise with increasing deprivation until, at extreme levels of deprivation, they subsequently decline. This challenges assumptions that NHS Direct is not utilized in deprived areas.

While primary care centres offer patients speedy access to face-to-face consultations, there are a range of obstacles which are encountered. Those who are socially disadvantaged appear likely to experience greatest difficulty, raising concerns about equity in access to services. Out-of-hours services may need to give consideration to patient transport and a more flexible approach to visiting at home if such inequities are to be avoided.

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