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,

Ogh, what maudlin hogwash.

i don’t care if she has 10 kids under three and works 100 hours per week.

if she’s on the job, she needs to focus on the job, not her personal life.

You should care. You want her to get through the degree.

I'm not q nurse but I've worked in hospitals where all communication with drs/nurses is done via an app, basically like a messaging service. Other Hospitals Ive worked in have an app for all patient notes, you can see patient obs, previous bloods results etc. There are apps for guidelines, apps for the bnf. Apps for learning.

She might have just been writing a note to remind herself to research something.

Personally I would leave it. If she's using her phone for personal matters I'm sure whoever is mentoring her will pull her up on it.

Not if she’s going to be one of those slackers always distracted by her personal life.

Do you calculate TPN rates before you put it up then? They always did it as they were putting it up and then of course, the other nurse who has to check it would usually take her phone out and double check the rates.

Always right next to my son as they were sorting the pumps out.

We check the rates/volume as part of the checking process when we check the bags. Unless we forget and then we do it at the bedside.

Student nurses are people, not angels. If she’s young it’s likely she doesn’t realise it’s not professional. I work with students, honestly for some of them it’s like the first time someone has told them to put their phone away. They view scrolling on personal mobiles during face to face meetings as normal, and these are often exceptionally intelligent young people with A levels and some with previous degrees.

In my trust we have phoned to scan the patient health records and input meds and contact drs. If this is in Manchester then she was probably reading your child’s medical notes. We use iPhones

No we are not allowed to get out phones out. Although I do often show patients cat pictures if it comes up in conversation. It’s quite a good ice breaker sometimes. I also have the BNFC app on my phone, as a PP said. Are you sure it wasn’t a work phone. We all have iPhones to do obs on.

You have zero information it could be work related or she could be waiting in her gp calling or news from a family emergency. I have a non phone job but there is times I use it for work or need it for emergencies. I've never used it for social media or games and it's highly likely she wasn't either.

Hons - phlebotomists use gloves to protect themselves from blood borne diseases like HIV and Hepatitis C, not to protect patients . They also don’t swab anymore.

Just seen she didn’t change her gloves - she should have after washing her hands.

It may not be the case at all, but I'm T1 diabetic and my phone runs my insulin pump and sensor. I work with patients and have to check my phone because of my diabetes, but I'd always say why I'm doing it and it often starts a conversation. I wouldn't do it during a procedure though!

I’m not a nurse - I’m an ahp. The nurses in my trust are glued to their phones - all the patient stuff and hospital apps for prescribing, results etc are in them but that’s only been the case for about a year - before that only some things were on them. I only have access to electronic notes on a desktop/laptop but I use my phone a lot. Despite being MSc educated and having 15 years experience in my profession every day is a school day and we google things LOADS. We also have our emails on our phones, our WhatsApp groups which we use during work for work, our stopwatch and calculator and rota, all our passwords and notes. We might not need to use those things constantly but we certainly do use them during the working day. I’m in a team of 23 with 3 computers. We need our phones. If she was playing candy crush while one handedly cannulating then I’d say something at the time but it’s sneaky to complain later when you don’t even know what she was doing. I doubt she has a locker. I doubt even more that if it’s a persistent problem then nobody has clocked it and she won’t be told. I’ve had students who’ve used their phone inappropriately and they’ve had their arses handed to them in private.

I think we've established that nurses or students are likely to be using phones for any number of clinical reasons.
I know I use mine tons. The stopwatch, calculator, checking on drugs or conditions. I will also use the camera for batch numbers or complicated instructions I might to keep track of.
Even the checks on our arrest trolley are now done via QR code on our phones. A phone has become a necessary tool for most nurses.

Exactly. DH is a paramedic and the Trust go halves on his phone contract so he can take photos, make work calls, phone families, alert hospital etc. it's cheaper than buying him a separate work phone.

I did tell a student off for taking a picture of a medication that was on a bedside locker. It was completely inappropriate and I couldn’t believe she would be quite so stupid to do it!

I really dislike and disagree with HCPs being on their personal phones during their shifts. I trained 2017-2020 and managed to count resps etc using a fob watch, survive without my phone for calculations (we had a calculator for use if needed or on the desktops). I don't see why that isn't possible now. Apps for vital observations aren't on people's personal phones, so if it was a ward-issued phone that's one thing... most of the phones appearing with multicoloured covers, charms etc clearly aren't.

I have a severely disabled son and needed to be contactable at all times during placement shifts so I gave the ward number to the office staff and changed it with school/respite care every time the ward changed. Yes a pain but necessary to be professional and also contactable for my son. I did check my phone regularly on breaks and it was kindly understood on bad days I might need to pop to the changing rooms more regularly simply to check I hadn't missed a call (took 30 seconds, if that), but I didn't need my phone on me at all times. There were paperback copies of the BNF at the nursing station and I did check them regularly.

I have relatives in psychiatric, stroke rehab and nursing home care presently and hate how much phone use I see. It used to be the case it wouldn't be acceptable but it's creeping in more and more and you're a monster now for expecting HCPs (and students etc) not to be on their personal phones on shift. I would hate to be a patient with staff around me on their personal phones. Particularly with my son and my relative who is in psychiatric care I feel it's a breach of their privacy and their dignity and a huge potential safeguarding/confidentiality issue. I wouldn't have dreamed of assuming it was ok to use my phone during work but then many nurses do it now so the students are just following their example.

Just the way I feel, I know MANY others think my way of thinking is wrong or old-fashioned.

When I had my c-section at least 2 of the people in the room had their phones out. One of them had been on a nice sounding holiday to Italy.

Having a 20 min conversation about what they did Saturday no shouldn't be allowed briefly using a phone no issue

I’m a very experienced (13 years in ICU) phones can be useful. Checking the BNF, drug monograph for infusion instructions, nice guidelines, using calculator to double check drug calculations, we have an app made by one of our consultants that has all our unit guidelines and policies on it, obviously we get approval to access it and it isn’t accessible to the public. Of course we can do this on a computer, but it’s the NHS, finding an available computer which has been updated in the past year isn’t always easy! I wouldn’t assume she was scrolling TikTok. in 2025 phones can be very useful clinical tools!

although in saying that I understand how it looks to see a nurse standing looking at her phone, public perception is important. I always make sure I let the patient and/or family that I’m using it for a clinical reason.

I was in hospital for a couple of weeks recently. Every single nurse had a mobile phone which they used to log procedures, scan my patient wristband, note down my temperature, blood pressure etc and even once to photograph something to show the doctor. Are you sure that wasn’t what the nurse was doing?

There were actually posters in the wards telling patients that nurses had phones for this reason and that we should expect to see all the staff using smart phones for this purpose on the ward, so I guess a lot of people had misunderstood and complained in the past.

In our Trust iphones are used to view and record just about every aspect of patient care from viewing drug charts to photographing wounds ...

I'm sure that if she is doing it repeatedly it will get picked up on and dealt with. It's not something I would go out of my way to complain about unless the moment had presented itself (and it was my child).

I have seen anaesthetists playing Candy Crush