Augmenting clinical communications between doctors and patient families through short text message updates – A Singapore healthcare experience

• Better communication between families and doctors result in improved care. • Text messages allow for more frequent, timely and consistent updates for families. • Use of text messages for communication are well received by both doctors and families. Families play an integral role in the physical and emotional recovery of patients. Studies have shown the significant impact that family plays in the overall quality of care and patient experience. Effective communication between patients’ families and doctors is therefore a critical component of healthcare. Most healthcare institutions rely on a longstanding system of phone calls as the primary means of communication with families. However, this is often fraught with difficulties leading to insufficient updates, miscommunication, and grievances. This study aims to identify the shortcomings of current system of updating families and to test the feasibility of using one-way short text messages to augment clinical communication between families and doctors. The study was performed in two phases. The first phase was a survey of patients’ families and doctors to identify issues with current method of phone updates and obtain information about their perceptions and receptiveness towards text messages as a mode for patient's family updates. The second phase was a pilot trial using short text messages to update patients’ families. The survey showed that 69 % of doctors felt that current methods of updating families were too time consuming while 60 % of patients’ families felt they were not adequately updated by the medical team. Majority of doctors and family members surveyed were receptive to the use of one-way text updates to augment communication (84 % and 91 % respectively). The pilot trial showed an increase in the percentage of families that were updated at a frequency of a minimum of twice a week, from 55.6 % to 80 % of families. Family members reported that this allowed them to receive increased frequency of updates and gained a better understanding of their family member. We conclude that one-way short text messages is a promising and feasible way to augment the current system of updating families, and to improve overall quality of care.