Abstract
Smartphones have emerged as essential tools providing assistance in patient care, monitoring, rehabilitation, communication, diagnosis, teaching, research and reference. Among innumerable communication apps, WhatsApp has been widely popular and cost effective. The aim of our study was to report the impact of introduction of a smartphone app “WhatsApp” as an intradepartmental communication tool on (1) awareness of patient-related information, (2) efficiency of the handover process and (3) duration of traditional morning handovers among orthopedic residents in a 300-bedded tertiary care teaching center. Written handovers and paging used for communication at our center led to occasional inefficiencies among residents. Widespread use, low cost, availability and double password protection (phone lock and WhatsApp lock) made WhatsApp’s group conversation feature an ideal tool for intradepartmental patient-related communication. Twenty-five consecutive admissions before and after WhatsApp (BW, AW) were included in the study. Eight orthopedic residents attempted fifty randomly arranged questions based on the twenty-five patients in each study period. A null hypothesis that introduction of WhatsApp group would neither increase the awareness of patient-related information nor improve the efficiency of the handovers among residents was assumed. A significant improvement observed in scores obtained by residents in the AW group led to rejection of the null hypothesis. The residents also reported swifter and efficient handovers after the introduction of WhatsApp. Our results indicate that the introduction of a smartphone app “WhatsApp” as an intradepartmental communication tool can bring about an improvement in patient-related awareness, communication and handovers among orthopedic residents.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Conabree D (2001) Ericsson introduces the new R380e. Mobile Mag. http://www.mobilemag.com/2001/09/25/ericsson-introduces-the-new-r380e. Accessed 10 July 2014
Statista: The Statistics Portal (2014) Forecast: the number of smartphone users in the US from 2010 to 2018 (in millions). http://www.statista.com/statistics/201182/forecast-of-smartphone-users-in-the-us/. Accessed 10 July 2014
Smith L (2009) Physicians in 2012: the outlook for on demand, mobile, and social digital media: a physician module report. Manhattan Res. http://manhattanresearch.com/News-and-Events/Press-Releases/physician-smartphones-2012. Accessed 10 July 2014
Wolters Kluver Health 2013 (2013) Physician outlook survey. Mobile Usage Habits. http://www.wolterskluwerhealth.com/News/Documents/White%20Papers/Wolters%20Kluwer%20Health%20Physician%20Study%20Executive%20Summary.pdf. Accessed 10 July 2014
Ozdalga E, Ozdalga A, Ahuja N (2012) The smartphone in medicine: a review of current and potential use among physicians and students. J Med Internet Res 14(5):e128. doi:10.2196/jmir.1994
Franko OI, Tirrell TF (2012) Smartphone App use among medical providers in ACGME training programs. J Med Syst 36(5):3135–3139. doi:10.1007/s10916-011-9798-7
Charani E, Castro-Sánchez E, Moore LS, Holmes A (2014) Do smartphone applications in healthcare require a governance and legal framework? It depends on the application! BMC Med 12:29. doi:10.1186/1741-7015-12-29
Wu R, Rossos P, Quan S et al (2011) An evaluation of the use of smartphones to communicate between clinicians: a mixed-methods study. J Med Internet Res 13(3):e59. doi:10.2196/jmir.1655
Agarwal R, Sands DZ, Schneider JD (2010) Quantifying the economic impact of communication inefficiencies in US hospitals. J Healthc Manag 55(4):265–282
Lo V, Wu RC, Morra D, Lee L, Reeves S (2012) The use of smartphones in general and internal medicine units: a boon or a bane to the promotion of interprofessional collaboration? J Interprof Care 26(4):276–282. doi:10.3109/13561820.2012.663013
Chowdhry A (2014) WhatsApp hits 500 million users. Forbes. http://www.forbes.com/sites/amitchowdhry/2014/04/22/whatsapp-hits-500-million-users/. Accessed 20 July 2014
About WhatsApp (2014) WhatsApp. http://www.whatsapp.com/about/. Accessed 16 July 2014
McMillan R (2014) You may not use WhatsApp, but the rest of the world surely does. Wired. http://www.wired.com/2014/02/whatsapp-rules-rest-world/. Accessed 14 July 2014
WhatsApp FAQ (2014) WhatsApp. http://www.whatsapp.com/faq/general/21073373. Accessed 15 July 2014
US Department of Health and Human Services (1996) Health information privacy. http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacy/hipaa/administrative/statute/index.html. Accessed 20 July 2014
Conflict of interest
None.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Khanna, V., Sambandam, S.N., Gul, A. et al. “WhatsApp”ening in orthopedic care: a concise report from a 300-bedded tertiary care teaching center. Eur J Orthop Surg Traumatol 25, 821–826 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00590-015-1600-y
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00590-015-1600-y