Distracted Nursing: On Personal Cell Phone Use at Work

A new societal norm.

Kathleen Bartholomew

Most of us have seen the cars on the highway that suddenly slow down in the passing lane, blocking other cars while weaving dangerously across the dividing lines between lanes. We know the signs of distracted driving well enough by now. It resembles drunk driving. Or we’ve had to dodge the people staring down at their cell phones as they blindly approach us on the sidewalk.

Divided attention in the nursing workplace.

The examples of distraction because of cell phone use are endless; in fact, especially in certain places and age groups, this form of preoccupation has become the norm. The behavior carries over into many workplaces, and nursing is not exempt. The following excerpt is from this month’s Viewpoint essay by nurse educator and consultant Kathleen Bartholomew, “Not So Smart: Cell Phone Use Hurts Our Patients and Profession.”

It is 6:45 in the morning, and as I pass a patient in the ED, I see a nursing assistant watching a movie on her phone. She is supposed to be monitoring the 1:1 suicide risk, yet she appears so intrigued with the movie that I wonder if the patient is safe—or perhaps wants to talk.

Earlier that same day, a nurse tells me a story of calling […]

Final Connection: An ICU Nurse Revises Her Feelings About Cell Phones

Illustration by Denny Bond. All rights reserved. Illustration by Denny Bond. All rights reserved.

Many of us have a love-hate relationship to smartphones, and each person (and generation) draws the line in the sand between invasiveness and usefulness in a different place. Cynthia Stock, the critical care nurse who wrote the Reflections essay in the November issue of AJN, “Final Connection,” starts her brief and moving story with honesty about such matters:

On Monday, if you had asked me how I feel about cell phones, I would have come up with this: I hate to listen to the drone of conversation coming from the person next to me on the treadmill at the gym. I don’t care about trouble with the HOA. I don’t care about a son who can’t decide on a career as a director or an actor. I work out to smooth the kinks in my soul from a job that requires me to navigate a relationship with life and death.

Today, ask me how I feel about cell phones. . . .

A good essay or story often centers around a reversal of some sort. What the protagonist believed may not be so true after all, or may be more complicated than first thought. As you can probably guess, in […]

Health Technology Hazards: ECRI’s Top 10 for 2013

hazard/jasleen kaur, via Flickr hazard/jasleen kaur, via Flickr

It’s a new year and with it comes new health care technology hazards to keep in mind, as listed in the most recent ECRI Institute report, 2013 Top 10 Heath Technology Hazards. While some risks from last year’s list made a repeat appearance, a few new topics made the cut for 2013.

Alarm hazards still posed the greatest risk, topping the list at number one. Other repeat hazards included medication administration errors while using smart pumps, unnecessary radiation exposure, and surgical fires. For an overview on these, see our post from last year.

Several new opportunities for harm seemed to involve new information technology (IT) that is making its way into health care facilities, such as smartphones and mobile devices. Here’s a snapshot of several of these, and some suggestions the report gives on how to prevent them.

Patient/data mismatches in electronic health records (EHRs) and other health IT systems

The risk:
One patient’s records ending up in another patient’s file may not be a new phenomenon—it happened in traditional paper-based systems as well. But newer, more powerful health IT systems have the capability to transmit mistaken data to a variety of devices and systems, multiplying the adverse effects that could result from these errors.

Some suggestions: The report suggests that when purchasing health IT systems, facilities should consider how all the connected technologies facilitate placing the right patient data into the right record. […]

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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