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

March 3, 2016 updated by: Umut Gulacti, Adiyaman University Research Hospital

Effectiveness of WhatsApp Messenger Usage and Other Technologises on Communication Between Consulting Physicians and the Emergency Department Staff: Randomised Double-blind Controlled Trial

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.

Study Overview

Status

Completed

Conditions

Intervention / Treatment

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 Many hospitals still use outdated pager systems as the foundation for clinical communication between physicians and other health care professionals. But, outdated pager systems contain some problems including long waiting-times for the return of a page, high costs, frequent interruptions, and the inability to identify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 This outdated communication technologies in healthcare can place patient safety at risk.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

Study Type

Interventional

Enrollment (Actual)

300

Phase

  • Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

This section provides the contact details for those conducting the study, and information on where this study is being conducted.

Study Locations

  • Turkey
    • Central
      • Adiyaman, Central, Turkey, 02000
        • Adiyaman University Research Hospital

Participation Criteria

Researchers look for people who fit a certain description, called eligibility criteria. Some examples of these criteria are a person's general health condition or prior treatments.

Eligibility Criteria

Ages Eligible for Study

19 years to 80 years (Adult, Older Adult)

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

No

Genders Eligible for Study

All

Description

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

Study Plan

This section provides details of the study plan, including how the study is designed and what the study is measuring.

How is the study designed?

Design Details

  • Primary Purpose: Health Services Research
  • Allocation: Randomized
  • Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
  • Masking: Quadruple

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm
Intervention / Treatment
Experimental: whatsApp messages
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.
Other: whatsApp
whatsApp application will be used for consultations.
Other: control group
consultations in the control group will be generated without whatsApp.
Other: without whatsApp
whatsApp application will be not used for consultations.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
arrival duration to emergency department
Time Frame: one month
Examine consulting Physicians' arrival duration to emergency department will be obtained from consultation hours in whatsApp program.
one month

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Time Frame
examine causes of consulting Physicians' arriving late to emergency department from data obtained by questioning of an assistant blinded to the study
Time Frame: one month
one month

Collaborators and Investigators

This is where you will find people and organizations involved with this study.

Sponsor

Adiyaman University Research Hospital

Investigators

  • Principal Investigator: Umut Gulacti, M.D., Adiyaman University of Medical Faculty

Publications and helpful links

The person responsible for entering information about the study voluntarily provides these publications. These may be about anything related to the study.

General Publications

Study record dates

These dates track the progress of study record and summary results submissions to ClinicalTrials.gov. Study records and reported results are reviewed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to make sure they meet specific quality control standards before being posted on the public website.

Study Major Dates

Study Start

October 1, 2015

Primary Completion (Actual)

February 1, 2016

Study Completion (Actual)

March 1, 2016

Study Registration Dates

First Submitted

October 23, 2015

First Submitted That Met QC Criteria

October 23, 2015

First Posted (Estimate)

October 26, 2015

Study Record Updates

Last Update Posted (Estimate)

March 4, 2016

Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria

March 3, 2016

Last Verified

March 1, 2016

More Information

Terms related to this study

Keywords

Additional Relevant MeSH Terms

Other Study ID Numbers

  • 2015/04-11

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?

Undecided

Drug and device information, study documents

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product

No

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product

No

product manufactured in and exported from the U.S.

No

This information was retrieved directly from the website clinicaltrials.gov without any changes. If you have any requests to change, remove or update your study details, please contact register@clinicaltrials.gov. As soon as a change is implemented on clinicaltrials.gov, this will be updated automatically on our website as well.

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