Student nurse using phone during procedure

[MikeRafone]

On a children’s ward

curtains closed and nurses is taken blood from child, student nurse is standing behind nurse but further down the bed. Student gets phone out and not sure what she is doing - she then sees me looking and quickly puts it away. The phone being out was certainly not to do with the patient

im comforting child during the blood being taken

are nurses allowed phones out whilst working and working around children?

not sure m if there are rules,

Not professional.complain to nurse in charge.

She's probably done it before and will be called up on it. I personally wouldn't take it further. Her mentor will notice.

The only time I get my phone out with a patient is to check the BNF app for my prescribing or to google something relevant to our conversation. I never get it out to check the weather.

Obviously you know she did wrong.
I would let it go and concentrate on my child.

Phone should be in her locker. Very unprofessional. I would tell the ward manager.

Absolutely not. I’m a nurse and would be pulling up any student who did this. Please tell the nurse in charge. It goes against the values and behaviours part of their assessment.

Unacceptable in any professional situation.

Not allowed. But I'd personally have a quiet word with her myself rather than report. A lot of these student nurses are mums themselves, under pressure, not paid on placement, working 80 hour weeks and juggling childcare + poverty to get through the degree.

Or she could have been on TikTok. But to get a phone out on the ward, I'd say was something important.

Student nurses don't get lockers!

Just to add we use our phones for drug calculations, using the BNF and in my Trust the nurse in charge carries a work phone.

But that’s not the same as whatever the student thinks they’re up to.

So where does a student nurse change/keep her bag?

Not professional but who knows what she has going on outside of work that she might have needed to check on. Poorly child herself at home maybe.

I wouldn't report it's a hard enough course.

She leaves it in a pile with everyone else's bags in the staff room. If she needs to change, she does it in the toilet.

I’d report it, she knows it’s absolutely not ok. I’m a nurse and a mum, and she has no business being at that procedure if she’s not interested in learning from it. She’s not sat in front of her tv. Someone interested could have learned something.

She might have simply been looking at the time. I would put it behind me. Student nurses have a tough enough time as it is.

You don’t check your phone mid procedure at a bedside. If you need to, you step out.

I have children, if school ring me I step away and find somewhere private to talk.

It isn't something that would bother me at all. Certainly not enough to complain.

Potential safeguarding concern imo. She should not have her mobile phone near children.

Or you take calls in your break, not when you are meant to be working. How often does a school ring anyway? Why have we got to the situation where phones are more important than work?

When my husband was critically ill earlier this year, my stepdaughter went to ask the student nurse on duty something and realised that she was mid-phone call as she spoke to her.
Stepdaughter is a nurse and was furious that her dad's health was being discussed with effectively a stranger listening in. Went straight to the Ward Sister and complained.

Later that day I realised that this woman was on her phone again. I gave her a hard stare and off she went to stand in the patient-only toilet. Did it twice more during that shift.

Not all nurses are angels. Some are as unprofessional as anyone else.

To be clear, every nurse on the ward will have a phone in his/her pocket.

And yet in other threads us nurses get crucified for daring to do as much as speak to each other.

We have enough problems with students appearing uninterested, scrolling through their phones, sitting, showing no initiative and not being able to carry out basic tasks such as making a bed. I wouldn’t tolerate any student that got their phone out at a patient’s bedside. It’s not professional.

Messing around on social media or doing something work related? You said yourself that you didn't see what she was doing.

In one of my local trusts, the medical staff carry work phones and/or tablets that are fixed for internal use only and can be used to view/update electronic notes. They also use them to make notes of things to remember, set reminders, etc.

For all you know, she was making a note for herself about the procedure.

Absolutely not OK -
SN reaction when she noticed you were looking tells us she wasn’t checking the BNF or something work relevant -
its a confidential clinical space -
and she should be paying attention / learning not scrolling !!

This.