This post is sponsored by Sprint and is the ninth article in a 12-part series on mobilizing healthcare for improved communication.
Communication, or the lack thereof, is the No. 1 contributor of clinical errors, according to the nonprofit Joint Commission, which accredits and certifies more than 20,500 healthcare organizations and programs in the U.S.1 What’s more, communication during care transitions plays a role “in an estimated 80 percent of serious preventable adverse events.”2
When doctors communicate with antiquated technology – from outdated pagers to obsolete email clients – it can delay the transmission of important patient information.3 Doctors make dozens of physician-to-physician communications in a single day – so a few extra seconds can add up fast, said Jamie Brasseal, vice president of sales and marketing for Mobile Heartbeat, which provides smartphone applications for improving clinical workflow and team communications.3
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While the results of delayed communication aren’t always as serious as medical errors, they can significantly impact the patient experience.3 Patient throughput – the time it takes from when a patient walks into an emergency department until he is admitted or discharged – benefits from minimized communication time, Brasseal said.3 The quicker a patient can be triaged and treated, he said, the better the outcome for the patient and the hospital.3
One example of faster communication is using mobile technology to get critical lab results to physician smartphones as soon as the results are available, Brasseal said.3 Currently, doctors periodically return to a computer to check for a patient’s lab results in between treating other patients.3 But if the result is immediately texted to his smartphone, the doctor doesn’t have to waste time at the computer – and he can treat the patient much more quickly.3
Similarly, bringing data into the palm of a doctor’s hand means he no longer must abandon a patient’s bedside to answer a page or get interrupted by a nurse asking a question.3 (Speaking of nurses: the average nurse walks something like four miles per shift.4 Mobile technology could reduce that distance by up to a mile.5)
From a doctor’s perspective, voice calls and emails have significant limitations, said Adam Maguire, Mobile Heartbeat’s director of sales support.5 Multi-tasking with voice calls is impossible, since you can’t be on more than one call at once.5 On the other hand, email is a non-urgent platform in which the user receives many messages that are tough to prioritize.5 And composing an email requires the time to formulate a subject line, salutation and message.5
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But texting, Maguire said, represents a happy medium.5 Doctors can communicate urgently with an individual – or all authorized members of a care team – using noun-verb form.5 And a text can’t be declined (unlike a voice call) and rarely contains spam (unlike email).5 Also, when healthcare providers communicate via text message, Maguire said, these vibration alerts contribute to a quieter hospital environment with fewer generic broadcast alerts.5
But most importantly, the sheer speed of text messaging can save a patient’s life. According to a 2013 study, when healthcare providers communicated using a text messaging system – rather than traditional non-text paging – the time between admitting and treating stroke patients was significantly reduced.6
It’s tough to think of how better to minimize risk in a clinical setting than through rapidly sharing pertinent patient information.
Read the earlier articles in this series:
The value of communication coordination among the care team
What are the best ways to handle care transitions?
The communication pitfalls of multidisciplinary approaches to treating patients
The five worst things about being a doctor (from a tech perspective)
5 best smartphone advances for doctors in the past 5 years
The pros and cons of BYOD (bring your own device)
The problems with charging racks and shared computers in hospitals
Mobile Heartbeat provides comprehensive solution to clinicians’ communication needs
1. “Communication During Patient Hand-Overs,”http://www.who.int/patientsafety/solutions/patientsafety/PS-Solution3.pdf, May 2007.
2. “Context, culture and (non-verbal) communication affect handover quality,”http://qualitysafety.bmj.com/content/21/Suppl_1/i121.full#ref-1, Sept. 17, 2012.
3. Jamie Brasseal granted permission for all of his direct quotes and indirect quotes to be used in this article. Interview date: Jan. 26, 2015.
4. “Measuring How Far Nurses Walk,” https://www.hermanmiller.com/content/dam/hermanmiller/documents/research_topics/Nurse_Walking.pdf, March 18, 2015.
5. Adam Maguire granted permission for all of his direct quotes and indirect quotes to be used in this article. Interview date: Jan. 26, 2015.
6. “Texting Cuts Time to Stroke Treatment,” http://www.medpagetoday.com/MeetingCoverage/AAN/37982, March 20, 2013.
