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Lis Neubeck, Tom Briffa, S Ben Freedman, Alexander M Clark, Julie Redfern, Nurse-Led Telephone Interventions for People with Cardiac Disease: The Importance of the Multi-Disciplinary Approach, European Journal of Cardiovascular Nursing, Volume 10, Issue 1, 1 March 2011, Pages 70–71, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejcnurse.2010.08.003
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To the Editor:
As Stolic et al. suggest [1], we agree there is increasing evidence that non-acute management of coronary heart disease by telephone in addition to standard medical care is a viable supplement or alternative to facility-based cardiac rehabilitation for patients with disease. Further, the relatively low cost of telephone-based interventions make them an attractive option to support patients and to deliver education in the early post-discharge period. Therefore, it is timely to consider the evidence supporting the use of telephone-based interventions by synthesising the current data.
In this review of telephone-based interventions the authors aim to review interventions delivered by nurses. It was not clear how nurse-led interventions were identified from the search strategy. However, we contend that effective interventions can be delivered by a range of health professionals, such as the CHOICE study mentioned in the review, which was, in fact, delivered by a physiotherapist [2]. This, of course, highlights that researchers publishing their work on complex interventions need to provide a clear description of care providers (e.g. qualification, expertise, and case volume, etc.) [3]. Indeed, in a recent systematic review of telehealth interventions we found that interventions were delivered by a range of health professionals, including nurses, dietitians, a pharmacist and a kinesiologist [4]. Moreover, Clark et al. [5] demonstrated that programmes delivered by generalists were as effective as those delivered by specialists. Thus, it is important to highlight the benefits of working in partnership across the health professions to ensure that all patients receive effective support and education which are tailored to their individual needs and not tied to the boundaries of profession or location.
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