No more internet access

Nurses General Nursing

Published

Memo: As of Friday May 16th we will no longer have internet access on the medical floors.

That is what I was greeted with yesterday. Now I am not a huge internet user but when the night is slow and the unit is clean and the patients are sleeping and the ordering is complete and my charting is done, I have been known to log onto allnures or my bank, or my email.

Now I have used the internet to look up diagnosis and print them off for patients, I have also printed off what a heart cath is and what to expect for patients families. I have logged onto Yahoo Maps and printed off point to point directions from our hospital to the hospital your husband is being transfered to.

My thought at 1st was to take these job related internet uses to my Admin, but by a simple search of my user name they would see that I visit emedicine about 5 times last compared to the 25 chocolate martini recipes I looked up the other night!!!

So my thought is ok, go with it, when the Doc wants me to print off something from emedicine and I tell him I cant, OK, when I need point to point directions from our hosptial to another I will just call our DON and ask her to fax them up to me. I think that may be my plan, just keep calling admin for faxes of information they can pull up on the internet.

Just venting here----so do any of you not have internet use at your hospital?? I just cant get the thought out of my head of they are throwing baby out with the bathwater!!

Specializes in neuro, ICU/CCU, tropical medicine.
Got to say I can clearly see both sides, but as a new grad there are so many things I want to look up and it is frustrating not to be able to.

That's what textbooks and handbooks are for.

Many of us remember the time when no one had ever heard the word "Internet."

Internet access at work is a convenience, but not a necessity

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in Med/Surg.

wow really?

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in Med-Surg, Trauma, Ortho, Neuro, Cardiac.

I think having internet at work is invaluable. I Google all the time.

But to me surfing the net is no worse than thumbing through a magazine while on the clock. Surfing or magazine reading should never interfere with patient care.

I post from work frequently when I have a few minutes, or there's an issue that I just can't wait to resolve. Usually I'm way too busy.

I'd be very wary of doing my banking from a computer that isn't my home computer...password protected or not.

Up Vote Up Vote ×

As a student, the last unit that I was on in a VERY BIG city hospital was filled with nurses and techs who spent a lot of time online (shopping at Target for Christmas gifts, playing games, pricing new cars, just to name a few).

One patient's daughter walked to the desk because her mom's call light was being ignored and wanted to know why.....and then I guess caught a glimpse of the Target website up and visible for all to see. She didn't do anything at that time, but apparently she went all the way up the chain of command in the hospital....and eventually 2 nurses & 2 techs lost their jobs. I don't think they lost their jobs for just that particular occurrence, but they pulled logs of internet activity and tracked their time online.

I am not a techie person so I don't know how this could have been tracked, but I do know that 4 people lost their job because when they should have been providing patient care they were surfing the web (with a lot of documentation logged on their internet use).

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in Rural Health.

Every facility I have worked at thus far in my medical career has had this policy in place: Sites that are not pertinent to medical care are blocked.

This includes banks, major retailers, shopping websites and web pages that have no use outside of one's home such as myspace and youtube.

At my current job my manager has to deem me worthy of an internet log in and all the privileges that go with it. Everything I do is logged. Every move I make, every turn I take - all logged and tracked. Even if I access a forbidden website - that is tracked and an email is sent to my manager with what I was trying to access.

There are ways to keep the net for patient care and keep the internet junkies from spending all shift on it.

Up Vote Up Vote ×

I'm a new grad and I have been on he internet twice now at work because i needed a quick brush up on a medical condition or a medication while I was on the computer charting. Didn't want to have to log off and get up and go search for a reference book and flip through it. It took maybe 5 secs to access a site for more info on treatment of DVT and cellulitis and a quick review of arixtra and which clotting pathway it interupts. I don't think the internet should be taken away from us. I see many others surfing constantly, however all of these people are able to get quality work done in a timely manner and are good at what they do. I am new and this isn't the case for me (yet). So in my "down time" I peruse my standing oirders and protocols and try to get familiar with policies etc... But medical websites are invaluable and should not be blocked.

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in neuro, ICU/CCU, tropical medicine.
...medical websites are invaluable and should not be blocked.

I have an issue with the quality and reliability of medical information available on the Internet. There are some very good sites out there, and some extremely bad information.

I have two particular concerns:

1. If you "Google" anything related to immunizations or vaccinations, a significant number of 'hits' will come from antivaccination websites.

2. A number of times when I have used a search engine to look for neurological conditions, I found that many of the results come from 'neuro law' websites, i.e., person injury lawyers.

Wikipedia is notoriously subject to abuse because anyone - anyone - can change entries, but I see my colleagues using it for information frequently.

Unfortunately, the most reliable information tends to come from subscription-based sites. People working in university-affiliated and other major medical centers usually have access to university medical libraries. MDConsult has online medical textbooks.

I strongly suspect that "I Googled it" will not be much of a defense if you get sued.

caveat emptor - or, caveat Googleor

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in Med Surg, Specialty.

I recently got questioned about my internet use. They asked me to explain. So I told them - site #1 was a Spanish-English translator for use on one of our patients. Site #2 was a university. Site #3 was a medical site. Site #4 was to check my email to find out how my brother's surgery went (my family communicates almost entirely through internet).

I was furious. My coworkers, meanwhile, don't get a second glance for spending hours on the company phone with their family members, almost daily!

If I do my work, I should not be questioned for benign internet usage, especially when I don't take breaks besides lunch. When internet starts affecting work then yes, of course. I felt it was a huge slap in the face, however, as I was already picking up the slack of my phone-tied coworkers, and they tried to ream me for internet. And what was their response after I told them all this?...

"Oh"

The best thing to do is to block the obvious sites, such as major shopping areas, ebay, facebook, myspace, and flagged mature sites. Then, deal on a case by case basis for abuses. As another poster mentioned, people can just as easily ignore their patients due to reading a magazine, talking on the phone, or talking to another coworker.

I take initiative to do a huge amount of work related research online to improve the department and our processes. Fully restricting internet would be not only a huge detriment to my work, but also an insult.

Up Vote Up Vote ×
I have an issue with the quality and reliability of medical information available on the Internet. There are some very good sites out there, and some extremely bad information.

I have two particular concerns:

1. If you "Google" anything related to immunizations or vaccinations, a significant number of 'hits' will come from antivaccination websites.

2. A number of times when I have used a search engine to look for neurological conditions, I found that many of the results come from 'neuro law' websites, i.e., person injury lawyers.

Wikipedia is notoriously subject to abuse because anyone - anyone - can change entries, but I see my colleagues using it for information frequently.

Unfortunately, the most reliable information tends to come from subscription-based sites. People working in university-affiliated and other major medical centers usually have access to university medical libraries. MDConsult has online medical textbooks.

I strongly suspect that "I Googled it" will not be much of a defense if you get sued.

caveat emptor - or, caveat Googleor

true, however there are reputable websites CDC for instance. I also would never print off anything from an unapproved source to hand to a patient. But if I want a quick brush up on ______. There should not be a hassle over me taking a quick trip on the internet to look it up.

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in neuro, ICU/CCU, tropical medicine.
true, however there are reputable websites CDC for instance.

Absolutely! The CDC (www.cdc.gov) is, as far as I'm concerned, the best source of publicly available information on infectious diseases and vaccinations.

As a neuro nurse, I recommend the National Insititute for Neurological Disorders and Stroke (http://www.ninds.nih.gov). http://www.nih.gov/icd/index.html

As I said, there are some very good sources of information out there but, IMO, Google is not a good way to find them.

The Health on the Net Foundation rates medical websites on the reliability of their content. A search of "HONcode accredited websites" is available through http://www.hon.ch/HONcode/Hunt/index.html

Up Vote Up Vote ×

i just use google as a home search page. we don't default to a specific search engine and google is fast and pretty efficient. In any case I'm pretty familiar with which sites are reputable (all those resarch papers from school).

Up Vote Up Vote ×
As a student, the last unit that I was on in a VERY BIG city hospital was filled with nurses and techs who spent a lot of time online (shopping at Target for Christmas gifts, playing games, pricing new cars, just to name a few).

One patient's daughter walked to the desk because her mom's call light was being ignored and wanted to know why.....and then I guess caught a glimpse of the Target website up and visible for all to see. She didn't do anything at that time, but apparently she went all the way up the chain of command in the hospital....and eventually 2 nurses & 2 techs lost their jobs. I don't think they lost their jobs for just that particular occurrence, but they pulled logs of internet activity and tracked their time online.

I am not a techie person so I don't know how this could have been tracked, but I do know that 4 people lost their job because when they should have been providing patient care they were surfing the web (with a lot of documentation logged on their internet use).

We have two pharmacists who should have been fired (but weren't because one of them is, for reasons I have never been able to figure out, exempt from disciplinary action) because they were watching TV instead of working.

:banghead:

It was not just when they were working with me, either. So, the TV in our lounge was taken out and to my knowledge, that was the extent of it.

Up Vote Up Vote ×
+ Add a Comment