Point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS): Assessing patient satisfaction and socioemotional benefits in the hospital setting

Evan A. Balmuth; Danny Luan; Deanna Jannat-Khah; Arthur Evans; Tanping Wong; David A. Scales

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0298665

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionDecember 7, 2023
16 Jan 2024 Decision Letter - Aloysius Gonzaga Mubuuke, Editor Transfer Alert This paper was transferred from another journal. As a result, its full editorial history (including decision letters, peer reviews and author responses) may not be present. PONE-D-23-41071Point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS): Assessing patient satisfaction and socioemotional benefits in the hospital settingPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Balmuth, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. ACADEMIC EDITOR: This an interesting paper addressing an important area around POCUS in the hospital setting. Please attend to the reviewer comments carefully. In addition to the reviewer comments, please indicate in your discussion how your findings support or add to what is already known in the use if POCUS in patient care. Please submit your revised manuscript by Mar 01 2024 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript: A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'. A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'. 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Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols. We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Aloysius Gonzaga Mubuuke Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements. 1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf 2. In the online submission form, you indicated that "The data presented in this study are available upon reasonable request to the corresponding author. The data are not publicly available due to sensitivity of the patients’ clinical information." All PLOS journals now require all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript to be freely available to other researchers, either 1. In a public repository, 2. Within the manuscript itself, or 3. Uploaded as supplementary information. This policy applies to all data except where public deposition would breach compliance with the protocol approved by your research ethics board. If your data cannot be made publicly available for ethical or legal reasons (e.g., public availability would compromise patient privacy), please explain your reasons on resubmission and your exemption request will be escalated for approval. 3. Please include your full ethics statement in the ‘Methods’ section of your manuscript file. In your statement, please include the full name of the IRB or ethics committee who approved or waived your study, as well as whether or not you obtained informed written or verbal consent. If consent was waived for your study, please include this information in your statement as well. 4. Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #1: No Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 5. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #1: Very interesting study on the patient satisfaction of POCUS; well written and easy to understand. I have just one general comment: In the limitations i think an added source of bias, might be from the providers. The providers, knowing that they are part of a study and being observed, may act more friendly and more in line with what they perceive to be good bedside manner. How did the researchers mitigate for this in the study? Reviewer #2: Thank you for an interesting read on an essential topic in the space of the emerging new technology POCUS in the inpatient setting. Please correct the following: Page 19 line 378 should read 'provider' instead of 'prover'. Please specify and add some detail which specific POCUS devices were used and applied during the study as there are now also smaller and portable devices used globally. ****** 6. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #1: No Reviewer #2: Yes: Ulrich Steinwandel ******** [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. 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Revision 1
23 Jan 2024 Author Response To the Editors, Thank you very much for reviewing our article, “Point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS): Assessing patient satisfaction and socioemotional benefits in the hospital setting.” Your insightful comments, and those of the reviewers, have pointed us toward important changes that have improved this article’s impact. Based on your comments, we have made several revisions throughout the paper. Having worked carefully to address the reviewers’ comments, we feel the manuscript is greatly improved, and we are grateful for the opportunity to resubmit our revised manuscript. Below we provide point-by-point responses to each of the reviewers’ concerns (note that all page numbers refer to the revised, unmarked version of the manuscript): Academic Editor & Journal Requirements 1. This an interesting paper addressing an important area around POCUS in the hospital setting. Please attend to the reviewer comments carefully. Thank you very much for considering our work, and for your insightful comments. 2. In addition to the reviewer comments, please indicate in your discussion how your findings support or add to what is already known in the use if POCUS in patient care. Thank you for this important suggestion. In our discussion, we now indicate in the following instances how our findings support or add to what is already known in the use of POCUS in patient care: - Page 20, lines 386–388: we indicate that our finding of patients feeling generally very satisfied with POCUS supports similar findings in prior publications across ED and outpatient settings. We have added a sentence to clarify that our study is, to our knowledge, the first to assess patient satisfaction with POCUS in an inpatient internal medicine setting. - Page 23, lines 445–448: we indicate that our findings of provider reassurance through image interpretation promotes patient satisfaction supports prior work showing similar results in the setting of fetal ultrasound. We have added a sentence to clarify that our study is, to our knowledge, the first to identify a role for provider reassurance in promoting patient satisfaction with POCUS encounters. - Page 26, lines 519–520: we indicate that, through this study, we provide the first characterization of the POCUS positive care effect and its facilitating factors in the inpatient hospital setting, implying an important addition to the POCUS literature. - Page 26, line 520 to page 527, line 530 & lines 537–539: we indicate that our findings may lay the groundwork for establishing a “therapeutic POCUS” approach which can improve patient wellbeing and facilitate broader use of POCUS as a diagnostic and treatment modality, implying an important addition to the POCUS literature. 3. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. We have made formatting changes to ensure our manuscript now meets PLOS ONE’s style requirements to the best of our knowledge. 4. In the online submission form, you indicated that "The data presented in this study are available upon reasonable request to the corresponding author. The data are not publicly available due to sensitivity of the patients’ clinical information." … If your data cannot be made publicly available for ethical or legal reasons (e.g., public availability would compromise patient privacy), please explain your reasons on resubmission and your exemption request will be escalated for approval. Thank you for requesting clarification on this point. In our new submission, we now include a file with the deidentified raw data that was used in our quantitative analyses. To ensure maximal patient privacy, we provide an age range for each participant instead of their exact age. 5. Please include your full ethics statement in the ‘Methods’ section of your manuscript file. In your statement, please include the full name of the IRB or ethics committee who approved or waived your study, as well as whether or not you obtained informed written or verbal consent. If consent was waived for your study, please include this information in your statement as well. We now include our full ethics statement in the ‘Methods’ section of our manuscript file, which can be found from page 5, lines 112–114 to page 6, lines 115–118. This statement also includes explanations of our verbal consent procedures and waiver of informed consent. 6. Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. We have reviewed our reference list and ensured that it is complete, correct, and adheres to PLOS ONE’s style requirements to the best of our knowledge. Reviewer #1 7. Very interesting study on the patient satisfaction of POCUS; well written and easy to understand. Thank you very much for reviewing our work, and for your input and recommendations. 8. I have just one general comment: In the limitations i think an added source of bias, might be from the providers. The providers, knowing that they are part of a study and being observed, may act more friendly and more in line with what they perceive to be good bedside manner. How did the researchers mitigate for this in the study? Thank you for highlighting the important limitation of potential observer bias. In our methods section (page 8, lines 136–139), we describe the elements of our protocol intended to mitigate observer bias: instructing providers to perform POCUS as they normally would for routine care, ignoring observers in the room, and avoiding references to the research study. We have now added an additional sentence in the limitations section (page 26, lines 505–509) to further clarify the steps we took to mitigate observer bias, as well as suggest how this could be further mitigated in future studies. Reviewer #2 9. Thank you for an interesting read on an essential topic in the space of the emerging new technology POCUS in the inpatient setting. Thank you very much for reviewing our work, and for all insights and recommendations. 10. Please correct the following: Page 19 line 378 should read 'provider' instead of 'prover'. Thank you for pointing us to this typo. We have implemented the suggested correction, which can now be found on page 20, line 371. 11. Please specify and add some detail which specific POCUS devices were used and applied during the study as there are now also smaller and portable devices used globally. Thank you for pointing us to this omission; we agree that the specific POCUS device used is an important consideration. The GE Venue GO Ultrasound System was used in this study’s POCUS encounters; we now specify this in the methods section (page 8, lines 141–142). On behalf of the entire research team, thank you again for considering our work for publication in PLOS ONE. Sincerely, Evan Balmuth, BS MD Candidate Weill Cornell Medical College Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: PLOSONE_Response_to_Reviewers_01.2024.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0298665.r002
30 Jan 2024 Decision Letter - Aloysius Gonzaga Mubuuke, Editor Point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS): Assessing patient satisfaction and socioemotional benefits in the hospital setting PONE-D-23-41071R1 Dear Dr. Balmuth, We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements. Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication. An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org. Kind regards, Aloysius Gonzaga Mubuuke Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0298665.r003
Formally Accepted
9 Feb 2024 Acceptance Letter - Aloysius Gonzaga Mubuuke, Editor PONE-D-23-41071R1 PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Balmuth, I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now being handed over to our production team. At this stage, our production department will prepare your paper for publication. This includes ensuring the following: * All references, tables, and figures are properly cited * All relevant supporting information is included in the manuscript submission, * There are no issues that prevent the paper from being properly typeset If revisions are needed, the production department will contact you directly to resolve them. If no revisions are needed, you will receive an email when the publication date has been set. At this time, we do not offer pre-publication proofs to authors during production of the accepted work. Please keep in mind that we are working through a large volume of accepted articles, so please give us a few weeks to review your paper and let you know the next and final steps. Lastly, if your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org. If we can help with anything else, please email us at customercare@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access. Kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Dr. Aloysius Gonzaga Mubuuke Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0298665.r004

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