The new norm—patient satisfaction survey (telephone consultation vs face-to-face appointment) in the field of otorhinolaryngology and head and neck surgery

Objective: Since the implementation of lockdown by the government of United Kingdom (UK), there are no studies comparing the differences between remote consultation and conventional face-to-face appointments. This study summarizes patient’s satisfaction outcome in our ENT department and suggestions provided by the patients to improve our system. We believe that telephone consultation will be a new norm in the ENT clinical practice and can be implemented even in the post-pandemic era. Methods: This was a prospective ENT department patient satisfaction survey, comparing patient satisfaction experience in the face-to-face clinic setting vs telephone consultation. The patients were asked to rate their satisfaction on a 1 to 5 rating system. All the results collated were analyzed using Microsoft Excel. Results: We had a total of 94 surveys, 47 from telephone consultations and 47 from face-to-face consultations. The mean ± standard deviation satisfaction score for telephone consultation was 4.723 ± 0.498, whereas it was 4.809 ± 0.449 for face-to-face appointments. The differences were statistically insignificant. Conclusion: Our study shows that patient satisfaction with a telephone consultation is comparable with face-to-face review and has the additional service benefit of remote working during the COVID-19 era. We believe that remote telephone consultation is an extremely useful tool even in the post-pandemic era.