Perceptions of Secure Messaging and Patient Safety: Results of an Interprofessional Survey

Communication technology within pediatric health care systems is rapidly evolving and has the potential to affect safety culture. After implementing a secure messaging communication platform at our quaternary care hospital, we aimed to evaluate the new system across interprofessional groups to inform future quality improvement initiatives.

A cross-sectional survey developed by quality and safety experts was distributed via email to physicians, advanced practice providers (APP), and nurses over 3 months at a single children's hospital. Descriptive statistics were used to summarize participant demographics. χ2 analysis with correction for multiple comparisons was used to analyze differences across clinician groups.

Four hundred and eleven respondents completed the survey, with nurses being the most common respondents (n = 166, 37.6%). When comparing physicians or APP and nurses, there was agreement that the new platform made it easy to communicate with the appropriate team member (P = .096). Practitioners reported feeling more overwhelmed by the number of messages received (P < .001) and being unable to review messages in a timely manner (P < .001) compared with nurses. When practitioner groups were stratified, trainees had the highest proportion of respondents reporting increased workload (n = 65, 94.2%) and being unable to review messages in a timely manner (n = 51, 73.9%).

Although there was a consensus across clinical roles that the new communication system makes it easy to communicate with appropriate members of the care team, discrepancies exist in role-specific workload factors. These findings highlight the need for optimizing communication strategies with input from different clinical roles in the inpatient setting.