Hospital patients are happy with nurses' new smart phones

I would imagine privacy to be an issue, especially if any personal identification info is verbalized, but it must be similar to patients sharing semi-private rooms.

it depends on who is on the phone and what the phone call is about. most of the time, if it's a quick call or a patient requesting something, i'll take it in the room. if it's a doctor, or something i need to leave the room for, i excuse myself. if it's a family member wanting to talk and i'm with a patient, i tell them i will call them back.

as far as privacy goes, i dunno. we have to give report at the bedside now in semi-private rooms. kinda contradicts the whole privacy concept in itself, doesn't it? their argument is that when doctors come in the room, they sit down and give information to the pt and their family in a semi-private room, so it isn't a problem that we're doing it now too. they say it's a patient pleaser--but if i was a patient and a nurse was talking about me right in front of me, and my roommate could hear all of it, i'd be kinda peeved.

but they say we need to involve pt's more in their care, so i guess the privacy issue isn't the big deal anymore. who knows.

Wow, this sounds like a great idea.

we've got the phones, but the director in charge of training of how to set them up keeps letting it slide. They are the spectralinks. Another area hospital that I teach clinicals at uses a similar set up and it works very well.

The easiest way to handle it is to move to the country. There's not so much emphasis on things like that, and no one would consider you rude for doing your job. Plus, we don't have to stop what we're doing to take a call...... multitasking, I think you guys call it?
I know a lot of hotels work the way you mention; so thank God we're not in hotels, right?
But you could always push for a 1:1 ratio and that would handle it for sure!
rb

Although I overall loved the phones, we had some lazy techs (and nurses) that would use the phone as an excuse to leave the floor. It's a very busy unit with about 12 nurses on per shift and 3 techs, so they think who will notice if I'm gone? And if someone needs me, they can call me. Well they had caller ID, so if they didn't want to answer the phone of whoever called, they just wouldnt. You learn the numbers pretty quickly, and as long as people are responsible, I found them to be a nice convenience. The charge nurse always had the same number, triage nurse, patient care tech, OB scrub tech, so you learn the numbers. The OB hospitalist and anesthesiologist carried one too, which was nice when you did not feel like going through the operator, and waiting for a call back.

I think you're right. They only work when there is a human in the mix to route the calls. Patients with direct access to the nurse for their question about which TV channel is CNN? Um, no. Personnel to personnel only, calls routed to the proper person. It's pretty simple. I never had a problem with a spectra and when it rang, I needed the info on the other end, 98% of the time. But I've only used them in the ICU and ER, it may be different on the floors..?
rb

We carry wireless phones although they are not wired into the call bell system. Even so it's not unusual for me to get 2 or 3 calls while I'm trying to assess a patient. It's mostly a problem in the beginning of the morning when everybody's family is calling to find out how the patient did during the night and the physicians are calling for this or that. I usually get at least one call when I'm in a patient's room.
I think the call bell concept could work if it was routed to the CNAs first. However, their usual response when the nurse asks them for something is "I'm to busy, you have to do it" so the calls for ice would probably be forwarded anyhow. Truth be told, with only one or two CNAs on the floor, they usually are too busy to get ice etc.

Hi All,
I work in a city hospital with a large nicu unit-over 70 beds. A couple of weeks ago they gave us the ascom phones and in this setting I think they really stink; how can you answer when you're giving care with both hands in the isolette?? But if you don't answer you're bothering the sh** out of the nurse in the next room who's also giving care with both hands in the isolette...and since he/she can't answer either the call goes to ALL the phones. I just don't see how this system will work in such a setting; maybe with adult pts it's better or more useful but it doesn't seem to be useful in a nicu. I guess we'll just have to adjust as usual...

We had the phones but a lot went missing and right now they're currnetly letting it slide. I agree that there needs to be a human in the mix to route calls. On my last shift I was overhead paged no less than 3 times to go to a patient's room with no explanation. (HIPPA?). Two of those times I was on my way into another patient's room with narcotics in my hand to give them and the third with a full med pass worth of syringes, etc. What am I expected to do, actually? I don't KNOW if they're having chest pain or want their water pitcher moved closer. Two other times I was gowned in an isolation room. I was able to use the call light in the room to say I would be delayed. But if I'd had a phone I would have had to ignore it for the moment-or step into the ante-room and de-gown to answer it.
Most of our pts actually make no distinction between the various roles different staff members have, they just ask to see their NURSE. I try to do some education and tell them that it will save THEIR time if they can specifiy whether they need a med or something only an RN can do or if they need help of the sort anyone else could provide. There is starting to be quite a body of data regarding the connection between med errors and the level of distractions going on when the RN is trying to pass meds. Multi-tasking is a large part of our jobs and I think I handle it pretty well when necessary. But this kind of crap is a time bomb waiting to happen. I would estimate 3 out of 4 of the instances I am paged directly into a patients room and have my train of concentration interrupted are things that could wait until I have finished the task at hand. I try not to be snarky-I mean whoever is paging me doesn't know I am gowned, or am on my way into another patients room with a syringe full or morphine that I can't just put down, or in the middle of trying to calculate a cardiac drip- but this is one of the things I hate about our job.