Coordination of an emergency response team is an important determinant of prompt treatment for combat injuries in hospitals. The authors hypothesized that instant messaging applications for smartphones could be appropriate tools for notifying emergency response team members. The objective of this study was to investigate the efficiency of a commercial instant messaging application (WhatsApp, Mountain View, CA) as a communication tool for the emergency team in a level-I trauma center.
We retrospectively evaluated the messages in the instant messaging application group that was formed to coordinate responses to patients who suffered from combat injuries and who were transported to our hospital via helicopter during an 8-week period. We evaluated the response times, response time periods during or outside of work hours, and the differences in the response times of doctors, nurses, and technicians among the members of the emergency team to the team leader's initial message about the patients.
A total of 510 emergency call messages pertaining to 17 combat injury emergency cases were logged. The median time of emergency response was 4.1 minutes, 6 minutes, and 5.3 minutes for doctors, nurses, and the other team members, respectively. The differences in these response times between the groups were statistically significant (p=0.03), with subgroup analyses revealing significant differences between doctors and nurses (p=0.038). However, no statistically significant differences were observed between the doctors and the technicians (p=0.19) or the nurses and the technicians (p=1.0). From the team leader's perspective, using this application reduced the workload and the time loss, and also encouraged the team.
Instant messaging applications for smartphones can be efficient, easy-to-operate, and time-saving communication tools in the transfer of medical information and the coordination of emergency response team members in hospitals.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 1. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 23 May 2017.
All research outputs
#30,788,009
of 33,979,905 outputs
Outputs from Ulusal travma ve acil cerrahi dergisi Turkish journal of trauma emergency surgery TJTES
#205
of 322 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#391,719
of 446,657 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Ulusal travma ve acil cerrahi dergisi Turkish journal of trauma emergency surgery TJTES
#12
of 21 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 33,979,905 research outputs across all sources so far. This one is in the 1st percentile – i.e., 1% of other outputs scored the same or lower than it.
So far Altmetric has tracked 322 research outputs from this source. They receive a mean Attention Score of 3.4. This one is in the 1st percentile – i.e., 1% of its peers scored the same or lower than it.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 446,657 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one is in the 1st percentile – i.e., 1% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.
We're also able to compare this research output to 21 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one is in the 1st percentile – i.e., 1% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.
