Abstract
BackgroundThe commercial development and expansion of mobile phone networks has led to the creation of devices combining mobile phones and personal digital assistants, which could prove invaluable in a clinical setting. This pilot study aimed to look at how one such device compared with the current pager system in facilitating inter-professional communication in a hospital clinical team.MethodsThe study looked at a heterogeneous team of doctors (n = 9) working in a busy surgical setting at St. Mary's Hospital in London and compared the use of a personal digital assistant with mobile phone and web-browsing facilities to the existing pager system. The primary feature of this device being compared to the conventional pager was its use as a mobile phone, but other features evaluated included the ability to access the internet, and reference data on the device. A crossover study was carried out for 6 weeks in 2004, with the team having access to the personal digital assistant every alternate week. The primary outcome measure for assessing efficiency of communication was the length of time it took for clinicians to respond to a call. We also sought to assess the ease of adoption of new technology by evaluating the perceptions of the team (n = 9) to personal digital assistants, by administering a questionnaire.ResultsDoctors equipped with a personal digital assistant rather than a pager, responded more quickly to a call and had a lower of failure to respond rate (RR: 0.44; 95%CI 0.20–0.93). Clinicians also found this technology easy to adopt as seen by a significant reduction in perceptions of nervousness to the technology over the six-week study period (mean (SD) week 1: 4.10 (SD 1.69) vs. mean (SD) week 6: 2.20 (1.99); p = 0.04).ConclusionThe results of this pilot study show the possible effects of replacing the current hospital pager with a newer, more technologically advanced device, and suggest that a combined personal digital assistant and mobile phone device may improve communication between doctors. In the light of these encouraging preliminary findings, we propose a large-scale clinical trial of the use of these devices in facilitating inter-professional communication in a hospital setting.
Highlights
The commercial development and expansion of mobile phone networks has led to the creation of devices combining mobile phones and personal digital assistants, which could prove invaluable in a clinical setting
The commercial development and expansion of mobile phone networks has led to the creation of many combined mobile phone and personal digital assistant (PDA) devices, which could prove invaluable in a clinical setting
Hospital communication in the UK currently consists of pagers and landline telephones, and they have had a ban on mobile phone use on their premises since the early 1990s, many doctors ignore this, using their personal mobile phones for convenience at work
Summary
The commercial development and expansion of mobile phone networks has led to the creation of devices combining mobile phones and personal digital assistants, which could prove invaluable in a clinical setting This pilot study aimed to look at how one such device compared with the current pager system in facilitating inter-professional communication in a hospital clinical team. The commercial development and expansion of mobile phone networks has led to the creation of many combined mobile phone and PDA devices, which could prove invaluable in a clinical setting This is because these devices have the advantage of providing mobile information access, making it possible to retrieve clinically important information at any time of day and in any location. Hospital communication in the UK currently consists of pagers and landline telephones, and they have had a ban on mobile phone use on their premises since the early 1990s (prompted by a warning issued by the UK Medical Devices Agency), many doctors ignore this, using their personal mobile phones for convenience at work
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