Patient and Family Cell Phone Use Can Seem Intrusive, Until It’s Not

Oh no, here comes another Dad with a Bluetooth.

My colleague and I roll our eyes at each other in frustration. Another self-important junior executive who must be in touch with everyone in the world while his wife labors unsupported, I mutter with dismay as I rise from my chair to greet our newest birthing couple.

I have to coach myself: Change your attitude. Change your attitude, as I weigh the mom and escort the couple to the birthing room. Dad-to-Be proceeds to spread out his equipment on the dresser in front of the window while Mom-to-Be, in obvious distress, changes into a gown in the bathroom.

That’s the engaging beginning of “Before the Signal Fades,” this month’s Reflections essay in AJN. The essay traces an unexpected path from complaint to something much deeper. Click the link to read the entire essay (and click through to the PDF version for a nicer reading experience). What’s your take on patient use of cell phones, cameras, smartphones, and the like?—JM, senior editor

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2011-07-15T16:19:24-04:00July 13th, 2011|nursing perspective|3 Comments
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How Are Nurses Using Smartphones at Work?

Here’s a recent post from Not Nurse Ratched that lists five things she uses her iPhone for at work: the programs/apps or features she uses are Epocrates, the calculator, Ratios, DrugInfusion, and Instant ECG. A Web site called Software Advice recently sent us the results of a useful survey on the use of smartphones among medical personnel. The figure below shows the most popular uses of smartphones at work, not just for nurses but for a variety of health care industry workers. 

Note: survey focused on health care industry workers, one subgroup of which was nurses

We know many nurses have already begun to use whatever smartphone they may have to access 5-Minute Clinical Consult, a Wolters Kluwer product (full disclosure: AJN is owned by Wolters Kluwer) that “provides instant access to the essentials of 700+ medical conditions” and “includes dermatology images, videos of medical procedures, AAFP patient handouts, drug database and more.” It can be downloaded to many types of mobile device — iPhone, BlackBerry, Palm, Android, or Windows Mobile.

But let us know: how are you using smartphones/handheld devices at the bedside? If not, do you plan to start using one? And do they really help?
–Jacob Molyneux, senior editor/blog editor
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2016-11-21T13:24:19-05:00August 4th, 2009|nursing perspective|6 Comments
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Views expressed on the blog are solely those of the authors or persons quoted. They do not necessarily reflect AJN’s views or those of Wolters Kluwer Health/Lippincott Williams and Wilkins.
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