Consultation Structure and Models

Consultation models have been integral to medical education and clinical practice for decades. Their use has expanded significantly in recent years, driven by the increasing push to standardize education at both national and international levels. As the telehealth industry evolves, these models are being increasingly adopted and adapted for remote care delivery. The Stott and Davis model remains a cornerstone of primary care, encapsulating key tasks such as managing the presenting problem, modifying help-seeking behavior, addressing ongoing health conditions, and providing opportunistic health promotion. This chapter explores the essential components of a primary care consultation and delves into models specifically designed for remote care. These include the Smith–King model for video consultations and the Dr. Samosa model for telephone consultations. This chapter also examines how the widely recognized Calgary–Cambridge model can be adapted to the remote consultation environment. In addition, it reviews various frameworks designed to assess the quality of remote consultations, such as the KERNset tool and the RICE rating scale from the Netherlands, the Out-of-Hours Audit Toolkit from the UK’s Royal College of General Practitioners, the Assessment of Quality in Telephone Triage (AQTT) tool from Denmark, and the Four Habits Coding Scheme (4-HCS) from the United States.