Research: Can Pulsara Facilitate Communication for Multi-Organizational and Multi-Disciplinary Clinicians?

When someone suffers a stroke or heart attack, getting the patient to definitive treatment quickly is crucial to their survival and quality of life post-event. But, getting treatment quickly requires communication between EMS, several care teams within the hospital, and sometimes even teams from other hospitals when transfer is required. 

Too often, this communication breaks down at one or many points along the way due to the outdated and non-integrated technology systems those clinicians rely on to relay their information. This antiquated technology, including phone trees, fax machines, pages, sticky notes ... (yes, really), causes critical patient information to be missed, which can contribute to treatment delays and medical errors.

To ameliorate these frustrations, researchers in Australia have conducted a preliminary study with the following aims:

"To describe:

1) If a technology-based communication solution could be implemented across multiple organizations;

and

2) Which factors are associated with clinicians’ intentions to use the technology."

To accomplish these aims, Pulsara was implemented for a 6-month pilot in 1 hospital and 11 EMS facilities in a regional area of Victoria. Clinicians in these facilities who treat stroke and/or STEMI patients were trained on the use of Pulsara, and were then given surveys "addressing organizational readiness (4 items) and clinician acceptance and intentions to use (22 items) with 7 point response scales: 1 completely disagree, 7 completely agree."

Of the 69 survey responses received (40 from paramedics, 29 from hospital clinicians), the following preliminary results were discovered: 

• "Staff from both organizations reported similarly high readiness levels to implement Pulsara–median (inter-quartile range)AV: 5.5 (5.0,6.0), Hospital: 5.3 (5.0,6.1); χ 2(1)=.06, p=.81."
• "Regression analyses (n=58; F(6,51)=17.58, p=.00; R2=0.67) showed Performance Expectancy (usefulness of Pulsara) and Effort Expectancy (ease of use of Pulsara) were associated with intentions to use Pulsara. Social Influence (important others), Facilitating Conditions (resources), Hedonic Motivation (enjoyment), and Habit were not associated with intentions to use Pulsara."
• "67% of the decision to use Pulsara was based on Performance and Effort Expectancy (Figure 2)."

According to the research, staff at both organizations reported that they were ready for the the implementation of Pulsara. Performance and effort expectancies  were found to have contributed positively to this readiness to use the platform. 

Since the research was concluded, Pulsara implementation has been expanded to a 12-month trial in two Victorian regional areas.

See the full research poster here.