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

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 Many hospitals still use outdated pager systems as the foundation for clinical communication between physicians and other health care professionals. But, outdated pager systems contain some problems including long waiting-times for the return of a page, high costs, frequent interruptions, and the inability to identify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 This outdated communication technologies in healthcare can place patient safety at risk.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

Inclusion criteria

• Adult patients who performed consultation in emergency department.
• 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

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