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NEW YORK, Mar 07 (Reuters Health) - While-you-wait health information might make people's long stays in emergency department waiting rooms more productive, new research suggests.
In a study of 470 emergency department patients, investigators found that giving them computerized health surveys in the waiting room uncovered more of the patients' medical details. This waiting-room healthcare also made patients more likely to remember medical advice they received in the emergency department, researchers report in the March issue of the Annals of Emergency Medicine.
To investigate whether emergency department waiting rooms present a potential "teachable moment," researchers had about half of the study patients complete a computerized health survey while they waited to see a doctor.
The survey collected information on patients' medical conditions and habits that affected their health, such as smoking, drug use and risky sexual behavior. The computer then generated health recommendations for the patient and a one-page patient profile for the doctor. During the survey, patients could also request and receive print-outs of further information on particular health concerns.
One week later, patients who took the survey were more than twice as likely as the other patients to remember the health advice they received in the emergency department, according to researchers led by Dr. Karin V. Rhodes of the University of Chicago, Illinois.
In addition, most of the surveyed patients "disclosed" at least one problem that put their health at risk, including problem drinking, drug abuse, untreated high blood pressure and depression.
"Of importance," Rhodes and her colleagues note, "the large majority (95%) of patients who completed the computer questionnaire elected to receive additional information about specific health topics."
The patients who took the survey were "very accepting" of the technology and interested in gaining health information while they waited, the report indicates.
These findings suggest that the emergency department is "conducive to providing a teachable moment for preventive health messages, regardless of whether those messages are related to the reason for (the) visit," the authors conclude.
SOURCE: Annals of Emergency Medicine 2001;37:284-291.
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