Abstract
Purpose:Smartphone technology offers a multitude of applications (apps) that provide a wide range of functions for healthcare professionals. Medical trainees are early adopters of this technology, but how they use smartphones in clinical care remains unclear. Our objective was to further characterize smartphone use by medical trainees at two United States academic institutions, as well as their prior training in the clinical use of smartphones.Methods:In 2014, we surveyed 347 internal medicine and emergency medicine resident physicians at the University of Utah and Brigham and Women’s Hospital about their smartphone use and prior training experiences. Scores (0%–100%) were calculated to assess the frequency of their use of general features (email, text) and patient-specific apps, and the results were compared according to resident level and program using the Mann-Whitney U-test.Results:A total of 184 residents responded (response rate, 53.0%). The average score for using general features, 14.4/20 (72.2%) was significantly higher than the average score for using patient-specific features and apps, 14.1/44 (33.0%, P<0.001). The average scores for the use of general features, were significantly higher for year 3–4 residents, 15.0/20 (75.1%) than year 1–2 residents, 14.1/20 (70.5%, P=0.035), and for internal medicine residents, 14.9/20 (74.6%) in comparison to emergency medicine residents, 12.9/20 (64.3%, P= 0.001). The average score reflecting the use of patient-specific apps was significantly higher for year 3–4 residents, 16.1/44 (36.5%) than for year 1–2 residents, 13.7/44 (31.1%; P=0.044). Only 21.7% of respondents had received prior training in clinical smartphone use.Conclusion:Residents used smartphones for general features more frequently than for patient-specific features, but patient-specific use increased with training. Few residents have received prior training in the clinical use of smartphones.
Highlights
Physicians have used mobile devices in clinical care for the last two decades [1,2,3,4]
In the late 2000s Portable digital assistant devices (PDAs) were replaced by smartphones, and by 2011 the prevalence of clinical smartphone use by physicians in Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (AC GME) programs in the United States was estimated at 88% [3]
Participant demographics A total of 184 residents responded to the survey, of whom 141 were internal medicine residents and 43 were emergency medicine residents
Summary
Physicians have used mobile devices in clinical care for the last two decades [1,2,3,4]. As of 2013, smartphone technology provided access to more than 100,000 medical applications (apps) on the two main mobile device software platforms (iOS, Apple, Cupertino, CA, USA; Android, Google, Mountain View, CA, USA), 15% of which were directed at healthcare professionals [5]. More general descriptions of smartphone use exist, including surveys of medical students and junior physicians in the United Kingdom and Ireland, and a study of clinical app usage by ACGME trainees noted different rates of adoption of smartphone use among specialties [3,4,12]. These studies have documented a rising rate of clinical adoption, including increasing opportunities for general and personal use, but no recent analysis of the general usage of smartphones by the United States medical trainees has been carried out
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