How can the use of the nurse’s personal communication device(s) impact patient care positively and/or negatively? What are the ethical and legal implications? What does the professional literature say about how communication devices can support safe nursing practice?
Hello Class,
In the ADN program in which I teach, our student use an app called Nursing Central on their phones. It has disease, drug and lab information readily available to them in the clinical area. When they first started to use it on their clinical rotations a few years ago, hospital staff were quite wary of this, thinking that the students were using their phones for personal purposes. Since then, I see nurses in both acute and long term care using their smart phones to look up patient related information.
What’s the policy where you work? Is staff use of personal devices getting in the way of patient care?
Or, if you are more recently a student, what was the policy at your school?
