Use of a community sexual health information line.

Background: Since 1989 Sydney Sexual Health Centre has provided a community phone information line (PIL). The service aims to educate and promote the sexual health of the community and facilitate efficient use of the centre's resources through the provision of information and advice to the community and health professionals; a referral service; and patient triage. In October 1997 a comprehensive computerised database was developed to collect caller information. In 2003, a 5-year review of the PIL database was undertaken with the express aim of describing the profile of people using the service.

Methods: We analysed data from the PIL from 16 October 1997 to end 20 December 2002 using SPSS.

Results: A total of 34,013 callers were in the PIL database. Every year the service has seen an increase in demand from 5295 calls in 1998 (first full year of service) to 8401 in 2002. The majority of callers lived in central and southeast Sydney geographical area, however, calls were registered from over 55% of postcodes in NSW and from interstate. The average caller age each year was 32 years with similar standard deviation and the distribution over time has not changed. There were equal numbers of male and female callers each year. Peak times for people to call the PIL were 2-4 pm with a high number of callers at 10 am. In general, calls were between 4 and 6 min duration. Overall, 14,098 (41.4%) of calls in the database were for general sexual health information. The majority of the information callers over the period who have been calling about infections have called about herpes simplex virus.

Conclusions: As is evident the PIL meets a specific community need. This study did not, however, look at patient outcomes and this area needs investigation to fully evaluate the benefits of a community PIL.