I'm all for cell phone use for emergencies, but regular conversations while pouring meds, doing pt care, talking to the UM or just sitting at the nurses station IMO is down right rude and is getting out of hand at my facility. I have one, but use it when my car breaks down mostly on my way to and from work. My kids know that if they call me during working hours for non life threatening emergencies, there will be hell to pay when I get home. Way back in the jurassic era when I started out in nursing, we could only receive phone calls for emergencies and could only use the facility phone for an emergency to call home. It seems that in the past few years, more and more employees are becoming obsessed with the cell phone. The last straw was when I saw one nurse passing meds and heard her entire conversation on the CP with her outside of marriage boyfriend. I didn't mean to hear it, but she was loud enough, so I couldn't help it. I wonder how many med errors she made. Then the same nurse was talking to the UM in the hallway and her CP rang. She told the UM, "Could you excuse me please?" and he walked away. I was flabergasted. Then there are all the others with their CP's. Is it a power thing? An attention thing? Or just plain old "I have the right to use it" thing. I don't get it. I really think we could do without these CP's on the job. We did in the past, so what's the problem now? Some facilities ban CP usage. I wonder what's up with our facility? I don't know, maybe it's just me.
How about you? Do you find them annoying if they're used at your work?
I agree that phone calls at work should be limited to emergencies. I have only seen one occassion of a nurse using a cell phone while in a pt. room and I thought it was very unprofessional.
i work 7pm-7:30am... i have my cell phone "with" me at work, in the breakroom with my fanny pack... if i need to make a call on my break (my entire world is long distance) or check voice messages, i can... otherwise, i'm there to provide care to my patients... when my children were all home, i carried a pager in nursing school and at work... if they put "911" after the house number, i needed to call them as soon as i was done doing what i was in the middle of... otherwise, i returned the call when i was on break or between patients... our hospital has no policy against cell phone use, the docs and staff all use them when and where they want, and i work on a telemetry unit... but i try to set a better example :) ...
The hospitals in the area all have signs at every entrance forbiding the use of cell phones there is an area outside where smoking and cell phones are allowed....when i was in the hospital for day surgery in January at least five people in the or was on a phone...including nurse at my side who was talking to someone about dates she would be available to work and the surgeon, didn't like him anyway, so I did not go back to him...but what to you do when you are laying on an operating table and you feel you are the least important person in there....it was a sobering exiperience
My hospital has a ban on cellphones My co-workers go outside on break to use them. No worker ever uses them in side. But the past few months has seen a rise on the number of patients who are non-compliant to the ban. One evening I was in a pt room and there was a terrible vibration--it was his self phone ringing inside his bedside cabinet. He had it set on vibration and it actually moved the whole cabinet! Also kind of scared me. He would not give it up. I called security-then he gave it up. Yes it seems that folks can not live without them.
My cell phone stays in the care. I've seen coworkers on their cell phones at work. Usually it's mom's, their kids are calling to say good night, or they are checking on the kids and family, so I understand, but I think it's inappropriate to be recieving calls in patient rooms, while working, etc.
Once again, my response is a tad off the topic, but for those of you with little ones that watch Rugrats, do women with a cell phone connected to your ear ever remind you of Angelica's mother, Charlotte? She's always on the phone with her assistant, Jonathon, acting very self important. That's the impression I always get of women (not meaning to be sexist here, but it sure seems to me more women use their cell phones excessively) who seem to find it necessary to take calls in the ped's waiting room, grocery store, gym locker room, the second the pilot gives the all clear for electronic devices, etc...
I know exactly what you're talking about!!! I was at the gym the other day, and was waiting for this tiny teenaged girl to get off the machine that I was signed up to be using next. She spent a whopping 12 minutes total on this cardio machine, the whole time gabbing on her cell phone. What in the world is so important that she can't hang up the darn phone for 12 minutes??? She was like 17, it's not like she was the CEO of a major corporation or anything! And if you have enough breath to be carrying on a long conversation, you're not working out well enough - so that 12 minutes was just idiotic. Then she went to the weight machines and CONTINUED to talk, doing the weights (dangerously) with one hand while the other held the phone, for about 5 more minutes. Maybe she just wanted to show off to the person she was talking to that she was working out, to make them feel bad or something??? VERY ANNOYING!!!
But if I was a patient in the hospital and my caregivers were on their personal cell phones, I'd be so peeved! But in the OR, that is completely unforgivable. And people wonder why patients are coming out of surgery with the wrong leg amputated!!!
We can only use cell phones on our breaks. Otherwise, they are supposed to be on vibrate only or shut off completely.
I got to disagree about the cell phones in public. They need to be used appropriately ie- don't want to hear a people fighting or as one young woman recently chose to do, described her lady partsl discharge problem to her dr, while at the same time ordering a meal. Yuck!!!
Well gosh thats not about cell phones! Thats about people who have no consideration or manners!!
rEAL nUT
13 Posts
I agree that phone calls at work should be limited to emergencies. I have only seen one occassion of a nurse using a cell phone while in a pt. room and I thought it was very unprofessional.