Plastic surgery online, how accessible are our units?
Online
Patient information
Plastic surgery
Telemedicine
Website
Journal
The surgeon : journal of the Royal Colleges of Surgeons of Edinburgh and Ireland
ISSN: 1479-666X
Titre abrégé: Surgeon
Pays: Scotland
ID NLM: 101168329
Informations de publication
Date de publication:
Dec 2023
Dec 2023
Historique:
received:
25
01
2023
accepted:
09
05
2023
medline:
4
12
2023
pubmed:
13
6
2023
entrez:
12
6
2023
Statut:
ppublish
Résumé
The Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of remote patient and professional communication. This has been especially important for highly specialised and regionally-based specialties such as plastic surgery. The aim of this study was to review how UK plastic surgery units represent themselves online and their phone accessibility. UK plastic surgery units were identified using the BAPRAS website and their websites and telephone accessibility assessed. Whilst a minority of units have clearly invested heavily in ensuring comprehensive webpages, nearly a third have no dedicated webpage at all. We found significant variation in quality and user-friendliness of online resources both for patients and for other healthcare professionals, with less than a quarter of units providing comprehensive contact details, emergency referral guidance, or information about changes to services due to Covid-19, to highlight a few areas. Communication with the BAPRAS website was also poor with less than half of web-links connecting to correct and relevant webpage and only 13.5% of phone numbers connecting directly to a useful plastic surgery number. In the phone component of our study we found that 47% of calls to 'direct' numbers went to voicemail but wait-times were significantly less than going through hospital switchboards and connections were more accurate. In a world where a business' credibility is so heavily based on their online appearance and, in an increasingly online era of medicine, we hope that this study may be a resource for units to improve their web-based resources and prompt further research in enhancing patient experience online.
Sections du résumé
BACKGROUND
BACKGROUND
The Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of remote patient and professional communication. This has been especially important for highly specialised and regionally-based specialties such as plastic surgery. The aim of this study was to review how UK plastic surgery units represent themselves online and their phone accessibility.
PATIENTS AND METHODS
METHODS
UK plastic surgery units were identified using the BAPRAS website and their websites and telephone accessibility assessed.
RESULTS
RESULTS
Whilst a minority of units have clearly invested heavily in ensuring comprehensive webpages, nearly a third have no dedicated webpage at all. We found significant variation in quality and user-friendliness of online resources both for patients and for other healthcare professionals, with less than a quarter of units providing comprehensive contact details, emergency referral guidance, or information about changes to services due to Covid-19, to highlight a few areas. Communication with the BAPRAS website was also poor with less than half of web-links connecting to correct and relevant webpage and only 13.5% of phone numbers connecting directly to a useful plastic surgery number. In the phone component of our study we found that 47% of calls to 'direct' numbers went to voicemail but wait-times were significantly less than going through hospital switchboards and connections were more accurate.
CONCLUSION
CONCLUSIONS
In a world where a business' credibility is so heavily based on their online appearance and, in an increasingly online era of medicine, we hope that this study may be a resource for units to improve their web-based resources and prompt further research in enhancing patient experience online.
Identifiants
pubmed: 37308375
pii: S1479-666X(23)00057-4
doi: 10.1016/j.surge.2023.05.003
pmc: PMC10257443
pii:
doi:
Types de publication
Journal Article
Langues
eng
Sous-ensembles de citation
IM
Pagination
e372-e377Informations de copyright
Crown Copyright © 2023. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts
Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they all have worked at a number of the assessed units but this has not affected how websites have been analysed and there are no conflicts of interest.