Future Mobile Device Usage, Requirements, and Expectations of Physicians in German University Hospitals: Web-Based Survey.

BACKGROUND: The use of mobile devices in hospital care constantly increases. However, smartphones and tablets have not yet widely become official working equipment in medical care. Meanwhile, the parallel use of private and official devices in hospitals is common. Medical staff use smartphones and tablets in a growing number of ways. This mixture of devices and how they can be used is a challenge to persons in charge of defining strategies and rules for the usage of mobile devices in hospital care. OBJECTIVE: Therefore, we aimed to examine the status quo of physicians' mobile device usage and concrete requirements and their future expectations of how mobile devices can be used. METHODS: We performed a web-based survey among physicians in 8 German university hospitals from June to October 2019. The online survey was forwarded by hospital management personnel to physicians from all departments involved in patient care at the local sites. RESULTS: A total of 303 physicians from almost all medical fields and work experience levels completed the web-based survey. The majority regarded a tablet (211/303, 69.6%) and a smartphone (177/303, 58.4%) as the ideal devices for their operational area. In practice, physicians are still predominantly using desktop computers during their worktime (mean percentage of worktime spent on a desktop computer: 56.8%; smartphone: 12.8%; tablet: 3.6%). Today, physicians use mobile devices for basic tasks such as oral (171/303, 56.4%) and written (118/303, 38.9%) communication and to look up dosages, diagnoses, and guidelines (194/303, 64.0%). Respondents are also willing to use mobile devices for more advanced applications such as an early warning system (224/303, 73.9%) and mobile electronic health records (211/303, 69.6%). We found a significant association between the technical affinity and the preference of device in medical care (χs2=53.84, P<.001) showing that with increasing self-reported technical affinity, the preference for smartphones and tablets increases compared to desktop computers. CONCLUSIONS: Physicians in German university hospitals have a high technical affinity and positive attitude toward the widespread implementation of mobile devices in clinical care. They are willing to use official mobile devices in clinical practice for basic and advanced mobile health uses. Thus, the reason for the low usage is not a lack of willingness of the potential users. Challenges that hinder the wider adoption of mobile devices might be regulatory, financial and organizational issues, and missing interoperability standards of clinical information systems, but also a shortage of areas of application in which workflows are adapted for (small) mobile devices.

Hospital-wide ELectronic medical record evaluated computerised decision support system to improve outcomes of Patients with staphylococcal bloodstream infection (HELP): study protocol for a multicentre stepped-wedge cluster randomised trial.

INTRODUCTION: Staphylococci are the most commonly identified pathogens in bloodstream infections. Identification of Staphylococcus aureus in blood culture (SAB) requires a prompt and adequate clinical management. The detection of coagulase-negative staphylococci (CoNS), however, corresponds to contamination in about 75% of the cases. Nevertheless, antibiotic therapy is often initiated, which contributes to the risk of drug-related side effects. We developed a computerised clinical decision support system (HELP-CDSS) that assists physicians with an appropriate management of patients with Staphylococcus bacteraemia. The CDSS is evaluated using data of the Data Integration Centers (DIC) established at each clinic. DICs transform heterogeneous primary clinical data into an interoperable format, and the HELP-CDSS displays information according to current best evidence in bacteraemia treatment. The overall aim of the HELP-CDSS is a safe but more efficient allocation of infectious diseases specialists and an improved adherence to established guidelines in the treatment of SAB. METHODS AND ANALYSIS: The study is conducted at five German university hospitals and is designed as a stepped-wedge cluster randomised trial. Over the duration of 18 months, 135 wards will change from a control period to the intervention period in a randomised stepwise sequence. The coprimary outcomes are hospital mortality for all patients to establish safety, the 90-day disease reoccurrence-free survival for patients with SAB and the cumulative vancomycin use for patients with CoNS bacteraemia. We will use a closed, hierarchical testing procedure and generalised linear mixed modelling to test for non-inferiority of the CDSS regarding hospital mortality and 90-day disease reoccurrence-free survival and for superiority of the HELP-CDSS regarding cumulative vancomycin use. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: The study is approved by the ethics committee of Jena University Hospital and will start at each centre after local approval. Results will be published in a peer-reviewed journal and presented at scientific conferences. TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: DRKS00014320.

Long-Term Survival Following Sepsis.

BACKGROUND: There have not yet been any prospective registry studies in Germany with active investigation of the long-term survival of patients with sepsis. METHODS: The Jena Sepsis Registry (JSR) included all patients with a diagnosis of sepsis in the four intensive care units of Jena University Hospital from January 2011 to December 2015. Long-term survival 6-48 months after diagnosis was documented by asking the treating general practitioners. The survival times were studied with Kaplan-Meier estimators. Cox regressions were calculated to show associations between possible predictors and survival time. RESULTS: 1975 patients with sepsis or septic shock were included. The mean time of observation was 730 days. For 96.4% of the queries to the general practitioners, information on long-term survival was available. Mortality in the intensive care unit was 34% (95% confidence interval [32; 37]), and in-hospital mortality was 45% [42; 47]. The overall mortality six months after diagnosis was 59% [57; 62], the overall mortality 48 months after diagnosis was 74% [72; 78]. Predictors of shorter survival were age, nosocomial origin of sepsis, diabetes, cerebrovascular disease, duration of stay in the intensive care unit, and renal replacement therapy. CONCLUSION: The nearly 75% mortality four years after diagnosis indicates that changes are needed both in the acute treatment of patients with sepsis and in their multi-sector long-term care. The applicability of these findings may be limited by their having been obtained in a single center.

Psychometric assessment of mental health in tinnitus patients, depressive and healthy controls.

Tinnitus describes the perception of a sound without external source and is characterized by high comorbidity, e.g. depression. In many studies, tinnitus patients were compared to healthy controls while a comorbid psychiatric diagnosis was an exclusion criterion. Consequently, patients with severe tinnitus and psychiatric comorbidity were often neglected. In the current study, we tried to fill this gap and compared four groups including two control groups: (1) chronic tinnitus patients with mild tinnitus distress (N = 37), (2) chronic tinnitus patients with severe tinnitus distress (N = 24), (3) patients suffering from depression, but no tinnitus (major depressive disorder, MDD; N = 23) and (4) healthy controls (N = 42). We assessed their clinical profile with clinical questionnaires concerning anxiety, depression and somatoform symptoms. Data were analyzed with a canonical discriminant analysis resulting in two factors. Factor 1 was called general psychopathology, because most questionnaires loaded highly on it. Regarding this factor, patients with severe tinnitus distress and MDD controls were impaired equally strong. Patients with mild tinnitus distress were more strongly affected than healthy controls. Both tinnitus groups reached higher values than the two control groups with regard to factor 2, called somatization. These results stress the presence of significant general psychopathology even in mild tinnitus.