How Many Staff Nurses Have Internet Access?

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Specializes in Informatics, Education, and Oncology.

Just an informal poll to give me a starting point.

How many of the staff nurses out there have access to the Internet at your place of employment? Place of employment can include: Hospitals, Outpt Clinics, Same Day Surgery Centers, LTC facilities and Home Health Agencies.

If the answer is "yes" you do have Internet access at your facility, is that access restricted in any way that you know of?

If "no", you do not have Internet access at your facility do you know the organization's rational for not allowing clincians access?

Thanks in Advance

Specializes in tele, oncology.

We have internet access (I work at a largish hospital). It is restricted, but I have not been able to figure out how they determine what we can and can't access...there seems to be no rhyme or reason. For example, Myspace is a no-no, but we can get to IMDB. I guess for when the patients have the burning need to know what movie so-and-so was in!

Everyone has access. Obviously, Media sites are restricted. So are "social networking" sites such as MySpace and FaceBook.

NO internet email sites are accessible. We had too much of a problem with PHI being sent out.

Usage is monitored and is restricted to business-only. It's hard to enforce that when many managers don't comply.

Since out bandwidth is very limited streaming video is frowned upon.

Oh, and private messaging sites are a no-no because of encryption and security issues.

We do have access. We've been told not to access non-work-related sites, but I have seen employees on sites like Facebook several times.

Specializes in cardiac/critical care/ informatics.

all computers have access, some are off limits like myspace and some email aol is restricted but the rest is not who knows. Game sites, Victoria Secret are some others that are restricted.

Specializes in Skilled nursing@ LTC.

I'm in LTC, and we were just given computer access about 3 months ago. There are restrictions on site access, and big brother corporate can track who goes where. We usually use google or ask for looking up docs who we don't know. However I've heard of a lot of nurses who like to play solitaire on the computers... wish I had the time.

Specializes in ER, ICU, Education.

We all have access but there are restrictions such as Media sites, and some emails such as yahoo. But I've noticed they can get on EBay.

Specializes in Perioperative Services.

we are a large university medical center. internet access is available but restricted for social networking areas, and we have access to internet email(s) gmail, yahoo ect. Obvious warez sites and Media sites are off blocked also. Most users have no local rights, but there are varying degree of rights in the IS/ nurse informatics - where we do some networking/computer troubleshooting which allows us then to remote access into other local machines on the network. However normal staff users are unable to change the date (or access to change date or other programs on the start bar). They are pretty much limited.

marta pierce

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