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,

I would want to know if this was my student. It’s not appropriate for many reasons.

I have a phone in my pocket when I'm in clinic. It doesn't come out when I'm patient-facing.

They do where I am.

We don’t even have lockers, let alone the students. We have a staff room with a code and everything gets dumped in there.

You sound like my friend who told me the students nurses were told in no uncertain terms their phones were to be left in their lockers or they would be reported.

I was going to say.

When my son was in hospital, the nurses definitely had their phones on them. One was showing pictures of her new puppy, one let my son pick a song from YouTube to sing along to when they did his dressing change etc.

If your student cannot make a bed, that is because they have not been taught properly, either on your placement or a previous one. That is a mentor failure, not a student failure.

Toxic, demotivating and bitchy qualified nurses are a HUGE problem for student nurses. You need nerves of steel to get through the degree.

Life’s too short
it could be anything from personal to work related
wouldn’t dream of reporting it

bearing in mind the NHS don’t provide staff at that level with work phones everything work related they contact you on your personal phone

Well they shouldn't unless it is a specific work phone.

This.
Nurses eat their young.

That's how it was at the hospital my son was at too. Handovers for shift changes were also done in the playroom (closed for handovers) because that was the only space available.

How do you know it was nothing to do with the patient if you couldn't see what she was doing?

I agree it wasn't professional, but she could have been checking a term her mentor had used, a drug dose etc, logging her attendance for uni etc . She shouldn't ideally do that in front of patients but that wouldn't be her the same as being on tik tok.

Raise it calmly with the nurse mentoring her if you're concerned.

Oh and when my son was on TPN (nutrition directly to blood stream through a central line) in hospital, whoever was setting it up would always use their phone to do the maths required.

Phones are great breeding grounds for germs, there is no way she should be using it for that reason firstly though I can see why people think it’s bad manners more.

When has everything become a matter of complaint and grievance?! Maybe she was taking notes, or checking something about the procedure etc. Everything is in our pocket nowadays.

I wish people would speak up. Times have changed, professionalism has gone out of the window not just in nursing, but everywhere. I think it is best to feel embarrassed afterwards for speaking out then carry it in your heart, for ages, because it was unresolved. I was furious with my gran, who told me the phlebotomist came into her room in a hospital, gloved up, touched the door handle to get in, approached her, very friendly, lovely manners, did not change the gloves, did not use a cleaning pad to swipe a venipuncture site and proceeded to either draw bloods or change the butterfly or whatever. Gran did not say a word, but oh boy, did she rant to me - lots of cleaning pads in her tray, ready to use, she did not use them, etc. etc. I speak up, most of the time. One day I shall probably be roughed up, but I would rather speak up then be annoyed for days afterwards. But it did not come naturally, I was very much like 'lovely Waldorf salad, Mr Fawlty', in fact all of my family are like that, embarrassed to speak up, but vent to other family members.

Our Students have their competencies and skills etc to get signed off for uni on an app on their phones. I wouldn't be happy with a student looking at their phone mid procedure though

Absolutely, there are times we do need our phone! I use mine for drug calculations, checking how I’m making up IVs correctly, calculating TPN rates are correct, the BNF etc. Even down to googling some syndrome I’ve never heard of. But not next to a patient.

Are students not allowed to take notes when they’re learning things/procedures?
(genuine question, I’m not being facetious, and if they’re not allowed to I’m surprised at that)

That's a lot of excuses for someone being unprofessional at work.

It's a lot of reality I am afraid. I wish it wasn't.

When i started in the ambulance service 20 years ago the trust tried to ban us carrying our personal phones.
Then one day all the radios went down and every switched their phones off. We have always been able to carry our personal phones since then.

We have our clinical practice guidelines, access to clinical notices, consultant connect (nhs phone directory service), bnf, toxbase etc etc, all on our personal phones. Consultants connect won't even work on our work ipads (where we do our patient clinical records), so without our own phones we wouldn't be able to arrange referrals or pre-alert the hospital to incoming critically ill/ injured patients.

The expectation/ assumption now is that we all have a smart phone.

As it doesn’t sound like she was doing something work related on it then it would be unprofessional.

i’m a nurse and have my phone in my pocket during my shift….i sometimes use it to use apps like the BNF (British medication prescribing book) or other similar apps or I use the stop watch on it for counting respirations if there isn’t a clock that I can see. I don’t use it for anything personal though unless I’m on my break (other than the occasional call from my kids nursery which I would let go to voice mail and then nip out and phone back but that’s fairly rare).

I’d have a word with the students mentor/the nurse who was taking the blood, she may have noticed when it happened (unless she was concentrating on getting the blood) but she will be able to escalate it appropriately.

We have iPhones to log notes and observations in our trust

The child is not my child and so it's not appropriate for me to say anything. I was the only person that saw the student nurse on her phone, the other nurse was concentrating on what she was doing and had her back to her. It was only as I was on the other side of the bed that I witnessed her on the phone and put in in her pocket when she saw me looking.

It was when I was travelling home that it struck me that it wasn't supposed to happen. Yes I have seen other nurses getting their phone out to do calculations, use the stop watch - but that has all been very up front and not surreptitious