Question

discuss personal communication devices and their use in healthcare.

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?

please include reference and/or cite please do not copy and paste...thank you

Answer 1

1) Personal communication devices used in healthcare are Mobile phones and tablets.

Their uses are as fallows-

a) Personal communication devices are used in healthcare for sending e-mails or messages to healthcare members.

b) They use these devices for calculations.

c)They can access work related medical information by using mobiles.

2) Personal communication devices use at work has positive effect on their work including reducing stress, benefiting patients care improving coordination of patient care among the healthcare team or increases unit team work.

The personal communication devices has more negative impact on work than positive.These personal devices often or always distract nurse while working. The over use of these devices may cause medical error. Personal devices may causes nurses to miss important medical information.

3) According to hospital security policy, and American Nurses Association code of ethics, if nurses are sending protected health information on their smartphones in a way that can be linked to specific patient, they're also violating state nurse acts. Sending protected information could lead to loss of employment, financial fines, jail sentences and loss of one's nursing license.

There is low established in courts regarding BYOD ( Bring your own device) particularly in public sector. So while you can draft a policy that permits an agency to access, track and wipe a device. A BYOD program can still expose a government to take legal action in an extreme situation.