Effectiveness of WhatsApp (a Messenger Program) Usage in Emergency Department (ED)

Adiyaman University Research Hospital

Status: Completed

Conditions: Communication

Treatments: Other: whatsApp; Other: without whatsApp

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT02586779

2015/04-11

Details and patient eligibility

About

Effective communication between consulting physicians and the emergency physicians is critical for patients in the emergency department. The aim of this study was to determinate effectiveness of whatsApp usage for communication between physicians.

Full description

Effective communication between consulting physicians and the emergency physicians is critical for patients in the emergency department. Many hospitals still use outdated pager systems as the foundation for clinical communication between physicians and other health care professionals. But, outdated pager systems contain some problems including long waiting-times for the return of a page, high costs, frequent interruptions, and the inability to identify the location or identity of the caller. This outdated communication technologies in healthcare can place patient safety at risk. Therefore they are no longer seen as an effective communication tool given the obvious advantages of Smart phones. WhatsApp Messenger, which is a messaging program for smart phones, is the most commonly used for communication in at present. As of September 2015, WhatsApp incorporated announced more than 900 million users. This is making it the most globally popular messaging application. WhatsApp Messenger have been started to be used for communication in healthcare. So, this study aims to trial the effect of whatsApp usage for communication between physicians.

Study Design and Setting: A prospective, randomized, double-blind, controlled, single-center, clinical trial was conducted in ED of a tertiary care university hospital with an annual census of approximately 200,000 visits.

Enrollment: 300 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 19 to 80 years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

1. Adult patients who performed consultation in emergency department.
2. Patients who are consulted to a physician using whatsApp on a regular basis and who is chosen by an assistant blinded to the study.

Exclusion criteria

1. Patients below 18 years of age
2. Missing emergency service consultations
3. Patients with more than one consultation call
4. Consultations which do not determined the arrival duration to emergency service

Trial design

Primary purpose: Health Services Research

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: Quadruple Blind

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300 participants in 2 patient groups

whatsApp messages

Experimental group

Description:

consultations in the experimental group will be generated with whatsApp. Patients' all radiographies, laboratory results, electrocardiographs, tomography images, wound images and/or extremity pictures will be sent to consultant physician via whatsApp.

Treatment:

Other: whatsApp

control group

Other group

Description:

consultations in the control group will be generated without whatsApp.

Treatment:

Other: without whatsApp