Are Text Pages an Effective Nudge to Increase Attendance at Internal Medicine Morning Report Conferences? A Cluster Randomized Controlled Trial

Abstract

Background: Despite the importance of medical educational conferences, low attendance remains an issue. The utility of reminder text pages as a behavioral nudge to increase attendance is unknown. Our objective was to determine whether reminder text pages increase daily morning report attendance. Methods: We conducted a multiple-crossover cluster randomized controlled trial among medical students and internal medicine interns and residents (learners) at the Veteran Affairs Boston Healthcare System during the 2019 to 2020 academic year. During intervention periods, all residents and interns received a text page reminder 5 minutes before the upcoming 8:00 am morning report conference; no page was sent during control periods. The primary outcome was conference attendance 10 minutes after the start of the conference. Results: The study period included 85 morning report conferences, which 211 unique learners were eligible to attend; outcome data were available for 100% of eligible learners. On days when no page was sent, 44.4% of eligible learners attended the conference by 8:10 am ; on days when a reminder page was sent, 49.5% of eligible learners attended ( P = .007). Accounting for clustering within individuals and controlling for date and team, the adjusted risk difference in morning report attendance associated with a reminder page was 4.0% (95% CI, 0.5%-7.6%) compared with no reminder page. No effect modification by overnight admissions was detected. Conclusions: Our results suggest that daily reminder pages may result in a small increase in conference attendance. Whether this small increase is educationally significant will vary across training programs that apply this strategy.