Family history taking is a fundamental part of genetic counseling, and however, it is also a time‐consuming process. To cope with the increasing demands at the Cancer Genetics Service in Singapore, alternative methods to collect patients’ family history were implemented to reduce the duration of the initial consultation and increase the clinic's capacity. Two interventions were performed in this study, where a family history questionnaire and telephone intakes (telephone calls to collect patient family history) were implemented prior to a cancer genetics consultation. The primary outcome of this study is the duration of the initial consultation in relation to both interventions while the secondary outcome is the clinic attendance rate before and after implementing the telephone intake. The impact of interventions was evaluated with a Plan‐Do‐Study‐Act (PDSA) methodology. The use of a family history questionnaire could not be evaluated due to poor patient response while the telephone intake was found to be feasible among the local population. Two improvements were observed after the implementation of telephone intake: (a) a significant reduction in the duration of the initial consultation from 60 to 45 min (p = .001) and (b) a significant increase of 29.7% in clinic attendance (p = .01). This study demonstrates that collecting family history information ahead of genetic counseling via telephone intake is a useful measure in improving clinic capacity, which potentially resulting in optimization of clinical resources.

中文翻译：

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在亚洲的癌症遗传学服务机构使用电话录音获取家族史。

接受家族史是遗传咨询的基本组成部分，但是，它也是一个耗时的过程。为了应对新加坡癌症遗传学服务中心日益增长的需求，已采取了替代方法来收集患者的家族病史，以减少初次会诊的时间并提高诊所的能力。在这项研究中进行了两种干预措施，其中在进行癌症遗传学咨询之前实施了家族病史调查表和电话录入（通过电话收集患者的家族病史）。这项研究的主要结果是就两种干预措施进行初步咨询的持续时间，次要结果是实施电话接听前后的门诊率。干预措施的影响采用计划研究法（PDSA）进行了评估。由于患者反应较差，因此无法评估是否使用家族史调查表，但发现在当地人群中可以使用电话。实施电话接入后，观察到两个改进：（a）首次咨询的时间从60分钟显着减少到45分钟（p  = .001）和（b）门诊就诊率显着增加29.7％（p  = .01）。这项研究表明，在通过电话咨询进行遗传咨询之前收集家族史信息是提高临床能力的有用措施，这有可能导致临床资源的优化。