WhatsApp messaging improves communication in an oral and maxillofacial surgery team

Abstract

Objective: Smartphones have become very popular among oral and maxillofacial surgeons. WhatsApp is an application that enables users to send voice, text, and multimedia messages using the group communication feature. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the efficiency of WhatsApp messaging as a mode of consultation within an oral and maxillofacial surgery team.

Materials and methods: A retrospective study on WhatsApp group conversations amongst oral and maxillofacial surgeons was performed between July 2015 and July 2016. A WhatsApp group consisting of senior and junior surgeons was created, and many consultations were recorded. Seven hundred fifty-six consultations were included in the study. In this study, the arrival and response times of messages, types of cases, timing of consultation's end, consultant locations, contents of multimedia messages, and the categories/types of messages were evaluated. During consultations, some cases were discussed with text messages via WhatsApp, and some cases with voice and image messages via WhatsApp, with or without WhatsApp text messages. In addition, several cases were discussed with video messages via WhatsApp. Thus, a total of 1747 messages reflecting four different message types were included in this study: 754 (43%) were text messages, 752 (43%) were photographic images, 213 (12%) were videos, and 28 (nearly 2%) were voice messages.

Results: The most frequent consultations concerned impacted teeth (n = 363, 48.01%). Most consultations were resolved using WhatsApp (n = 306, 64.4%), and consultants were often not in the hospital during these consultations (n = 411, 54.3%). Most messages sent by consultants were conclusive (n = 306, 74.4%).

Conclusion: We conclude that WhatsApp is a simple, free, and practical application, which allows efficient consultation when consultants are not in the hospital.