Clinical trial NCT02586779: Effectiveness of WhatsApp (a Messenger Program) Usage in Emergency Department (ED)
Official title: Effectiveness of WhatsApp Messenger Usage and Other Technologises on Communication Between Consulting Physicians and the Emergency Department Staff: Randomised Double-blind Controlled Trial
Study type: INTERVENTIONAL
Overall status: COMPLETED
Phase: NA
Conditions: Communication
Keywords: Referral and consultation
emergency department
WhatsApp
Lead sponsor: Adiyaman University Research Hospital
Sponsor class: OTHER
First posted: 2015-10-26
Enrollment: 300
Sex: ALL
Minimum age (years): 19
Maximum age (years): 80
Standard ages: ADULT
OLDER_ADULT
Accepts healthy volunteers: no
Allocation: RANDOMIZED
Intervention model: PARALLEL
Primary purpose: HEALTH_SERVICES_RESEARCH

Brief summary: 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.

Detailed 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 Many hospitals still use outdated pager systems as the foundation for clinical communication between physicians and other health care professionals. But, outdated pager systems contain some problems including long waiting-times for the return of a page, high costs, frequent interruptions, and the inability to identify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 This outdated communication technologies in healthcare can place patient safety at risk.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.

Eligibility criteria: 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

Primary outcomes:
measure: arrival duration to emergency department
timeFrame: one month
Secondary outcomes:
measure: examine causes of consulting Physicians' arriving late to emergency department from data obtained by questioning of an assistant blinded to the study
timeFrame: one month
Other outcomes:
Locations:
city: Adiyaman
country: Turkey
facility: Adiyaman University Research Hospital
state: Central
Study officials:
affiliation: Adiyaman University of Medical Faculty
name: Umut Gulacti, M.D.
role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR
References:
citation: Johnston MJ, King D, Arora S, Behar N, Athanasiou T, Sevdalis N, Darzi A. Smartphones let surgeons know WhatsApp: an analysis of communication in emergency surgical teams. Am J Surg. 2015 Jan;209(1):45-51. doi: 10.1016/j.amjsurg.2014.08.030. Epub 2014 Oct 22.