Real time medical learning using the WhatsApp cellular network: a cross sectional study following the experience of a division’s medical officers in the Israel Defense Forces

BACKGROUND Primary care medical officers (MOs) are expected to maintain self-education while serving in their units in order to maintain professional standards. With the rise of smartphone use in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), the WhatsApp application can facilitate medical learning. To date, there has been no description of the use of this tool by MOs in a military setting. This paper aims to describe the pattern of use of a WhatsApp application group by IDF's MOs. METHODS We collected all the information (textual and visual) uploaded to a WhatsApp group called "The Division's Physicians", originally established two years earlier, during a randomly selected sample month. We analyzed the pattern of its use and explored the association between the number of questions and responses uploaded to the group and the duration of service of their senders. RESULTS In December 2014, the "The Division's Physicians" WhatsApp group had 41 participants. We identified 478 messages classified as questions and 531 messages classified as responses. The number of questions asked by MOs in their first 2 months of service in the battalion (median = 14.5) and the number of questions asked by MOs with more than one year of their first assignment (median = 10.5) were significantly higher than the number of questions (median = 1.0) asked by MOs in their second assignment or later (p values for comparisons were 0.008 and 0.012 respectively). We also found that both the number of responses provided by MOs with more than one year of service in the battalion (median = 21) and the number of responses provided by MOs in their second assignment or later (median = 5) were significantly higher than the number of responses (median = 1) provided by MOs within their first 2 months of service in the battalion (p value for comparisons were 0.024 and 0.039 respectively). CONCLUSION We conclude from our preliminary study that a WhatsApp group can facilitate the transfer of knowledge from more experienced MOs to those with less experience.