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

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: 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. METHODS: 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. RESULTS: 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%). CONCLUSIONS: 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.