INFONET

INFONET: Brief INFOrmation messages to support safety-NETting (INFONET) in primary care

When doctors are not sure what is making a patient ill, they give follow-up advice called ‘safety-netting’. It usually includes telling patients what to watch for, when to ask for more medical help, and how to care for themselves. This can help avoid tests they do not need and make sure serious illnesses are found quickly. For example, a doctor might say: "If your symptoms don’t get better in two weeks, or if you start feeling worse, come back and see me."

Our research shows that patients with cancer are diagnosed more quickly if they get clear follow-up advice. However, if the advice is unclear, patients may feel confused or ignored. We found that giving extra information after the appointment can help patients remember and follow the advice. One way to do this is by sending text-messages with the advice. Both doctors and patients find this helpful.

WHAT WE ARE DOING

With INFONET we are aiming to develop the text for a set of text-messages which can be changed to give patients clear follow-up advice. We will do this through two INFONET studies:

1. How should follow-up advice be sent by text?

We will ask 40 healthcare professionals and 40 patients about their experiences of giving and getting health advice by text-message. We want to learn what works well, what could be improved, and use this information to design follow-up advice text-message templates. Afterwards we will have workshops to design different text-message options.

2. What do patients prefer in text-messages?

We will run a survey to find out what text-message options people find most helpful. We will ask 1,000 people to choose which of the text-messages designed in Study 1 they prefer. The most popular text-messages will be the final set of messages.

This study is not yet recruiting but please check back occasionally if you are interested in taking part.

Expected Impact

The results of this study will be presented at national and international conferences and shared with stakeholders including patients, health care professionals, and policy makers. Our aim is that they will help in the creation of information for patients that is useful when deciding whether to seek more medical advice.