Intended for healthcare professionals

Rapid response to:

Feature Technology

Wanted: a WhatsApp alternative for clinicians

BMJ 2018; 360 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.k622 (Published 12 February 2018) Cite this as: BMJ 2018;360:k622

Rapid Response:

WhatsApp for social communication, but not about patients

I'm glad to see the focus is shifting towards modernising communication in medicine, yet can't help but feel some interactions should still exist within a regulated platform and not involve individual phones. WhatsApp is a logical way to communicate with other doctors - ideal for covering rota gaps and arranging social meetings - yet this doesn't allow for input from other healthcare professionals . Instead, efforts should be made to modernise how the system runs overall. In our hospital, we have recently integrated electronic handovers and worklists for out of hours shifts. Nursing and medical staff add patient-specific tasks to a virtual worklist on an online patient management system. The on-call doctor can use their unique login on any hospital computer and see patients that need to be reviewed or tasks that are required (such as cannulation), then tick them off once completed. When covering 10 wards at a time, between two doctors, we have found this an extremely useful way to prioritise tasks and share the workload, without using our own phones.

Competing interests: No competing interests

24 February 2018
Anna Rose
FY1
Glasgow