Real time medical learning using the WhatsApp cellular network: a cross sectional study following the experience of a division’s medical officers in the Israel Defense Forces

Abstract

BackgroundPrimary care medical officers (MOs) are expected to maintain self-education while serving in their units in order to maintain professional standards. With the rise of smartphone use in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), the WhatsApp application can facilitate medical learning. To date, there has been no description of the use of this tool by MOs in a military setting. This paper aims to describe the pattern of use of a WhatsApp application group by IDF’s MOs.MethodsWe collected all the information (textual and visual) uploaded to a WhatsApp group called “The Division’s Physicians”, originally established two years earlier, during a randomly selected sample month. We analyzed the pattern of its use and explored the association between the number of questions and responses uploaded to the group and the duration of service of their senders.ResultsIn December 2014, the “The Division’s Physicians” WhatsApp group had 41 participants. We identified 478 messages classified as questions and 531 messages classified as responses. The number of questions asked by MOs in their first 2 months of service in the battalion (median = 14.5) and the number of questions asked by MOs with more than one year of their first assignment (median = 10.5) were significantly higher than the number of questions (median = 1.0) asked by MOs in their second assignment or later (p values for comparisons were 0.008 and 0.012 respectively). We also found that both the number of responses provided by MOs with more than one year of service in the battalion (median = 21) and the number of responses provided by MOs in their second assignment or later (median = 5) were significantly higher than the number of responses (median = 1) provided by MOs within their first 2 months of service in the battalion (p value for comparisons were 0.024 and 0.039 respectively).ConclusionWe conclude from our preliminary study that a WhatsApp group can facilitate the transfer of knowledge from more experienced MOs to those with less experience.

The role of WhatsApp® in medical education; a scoping review and instructional design model

“…The most common study setting for the WhatsApp® group usage was locally in either a university setting [20, 23, 25, 31, 34–38] or a hospital department [17, 18, 21, 24, 30, 32, 33]. Six studies had a national setting [19, 22, 26–29]. Only one study had international WhatsApp® group participation [10].…”

“…The seven remaining studies described WhatsApp® groups that included non-educational discourse [10, 20, 22, 25, 28, 29, 32]. This included sharing the clinical aspects of patient care, organisational and scheduling information, emotional support and social messages.…”

“…Twelve articles reported data on the technical/logistical aspects of WhatsApp®, mostly drawn from user surveys [10, 17, 22, 23, 25, 26, 31, 33–36, 38]. The most cited benefit of WhatsApp® was its ability to create new learning opportunities, when geographical or time constraints meant that “meeting face-to-face is not possible” (p569) [25], described as “anytime, anywhere learning” [34, 38].…”

Opportunities and challenges of using social media communication in patient care and counselling in family practice: a scoping review and ethical analysis.

“…Social media (such as WhatsApp and Facebook) presents an effective learning and teaching environment, as they can be adapted to the internet [26][27][28], offering invaluable opportunities for patient education and counselling [2,29] as well as for social, participatory and collaborative learning [31][32][33][34]. While social may create ethical issues related to loss of autonomy, inequitable access, risks such as loss of data security, or unfair distribution of risks and benefits, classifiable into four categories: Beneficence (maximizing benefit and minimizing harms), Autonomy (respect for individuals and communities of users) and justice (treating people equally and fairly.…”

Social messaging for global health: lessons from Haiti

“…Recently, several small studies have suggested that WhatsApp can facilitate local and remote patient consultation [8-10] and improve provider education [11]. Preliminary data indicate that mobile technologies including WhatsApp facilitate health, security and information access in refugee settings [12].…”