Hospitalists and health care teams struggle with issues related to text messaging in the workplace. “It’s happening whether an institution has a secure text messaging platform or not,” said Philip Hagedorn, MD, MBI, associate chief medical information officer at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center.
“Many places reacted to this reality by procuring a solution – take your pick of secure text messaging platforms – and implementing it, but bypassed an opportunity to think about how we tailor the use of this culturally ubiquitous medium to the health care setting,” he said.It doesn’t work to just drop a secure text messaging platform into clinical systems and expect that health care practitioners will know how to use them appropriately, Dr. Hagedorn says. “The way we use text messaging in our lives outside health care inevitably bleeds into how we use the medium at work, but it shouldn’t. The needs are different and the stakes are higher for communication in the health care setting.”
In a paper looking at the issue, Dr. Hagedorn and co-authors laid out critical areas of concern, such as text messaging becoming a form of alarm fatigue and also increasing the likelihood of communication error.
“It’s my hope that fellow hospitalists can use this as an opportunity to think deeply about how we communicate in health care,” he said. “If we don’t think critically about how and where something like text messaging should be used in medicine, we risk facing unintended consequences for our patients.”The article discusses several steps for mitigating the risks laid out, including proactive surveillance and targeted training. “These are starting points, and I’m sure there are plenty of other creative solutions out there. We wanted to get the conversation going. We’d love to hear from others who face similar issues or have come up with interesting solutions.”
Reference
1. Hagedorn PA, et al. Secure Text Messaging in Healthcare: Latent Threats and Opportunities to Improve Patient Safety. J Hosp Med. 2020 June;15(6):378-380. Published Online First 2019 Sept 18. doi: 10.12788/jhm.3305
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