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,

On a totally irrelevant note, I'm loving the fact that people think nurses have a locker or a changing area.

Surely it’s a basic safeguarding issue but as others have said, she sounds bored and not paying attention to something that will be a crucial part of her role - taking blood carefully, especially from a nervous or sick child.

It’s also grim from a hygiene perspective.

Would agree with you here. I did two years of a nursing degree and withdrew at the start of year three. The placements gave me panic attacks! Nurses really need to remember what it’s like to be a student - it can be a horrible place to be.
but no student should be on her phone while observing a procedure.

Don't they have those upside down watches pinned to their uniform anymore?

Honestly no student nurse is observing how to take blood and then going off to do it themselves she's probably following her mentor around. You have to do a course and then multiple practices and signs offs lots of unis and hospitals don't even let students touch iv devices until they are qualified and completed the course. I'm a paeds a&e nurse always have my phone on me as does most of the mdt in the department. There's apps websites and intranet used multiple times a day. Often the cows aren't working or there's no desktops available in the area we don't have physical copies of the BNF anymore.
I've lost track of the number of fob watches where the pin has broken or stopped working or has accidentally gone in the wash I use my phone to check the time or set timers for when I need to go back and check on a patient.
If I saw my student on her phone for the non work reasons above id have a word and remind them about professionalism but I'm not making a complaint about them unless it's a continuous thing

No we are not allowed, infection control rules.

We wouldn’t be allowed to use them. Ours are calibrated for accuracy

They aren't going to be accurate at all if none are available and your child needs hourly obs. I can understand why parents might do it.

I still didn't find them super accurate anyway, I remember them repeating it a few times when it didn't look right and the first one was indeed incorrect. Or they would do his first obs with the ear one but then it would disappear so they'd do some with the armpit one and repeat because then the armpit one would disappear.

DS2 is an outreach nurse. He had a student in with him who kept going on her phone to look at TikTok, when they were in the office between patients, instead of reading the necessary information he gave. He only has them for a shift, so after the third time of asking, he asked her if she wanted to be there, to which she replied “not really…” so he sent her home and emailed her tutor at the university.

He’s not toxic at all. He absolutely loves his job and wants students to do well. He’s 2 yrs into his masters, and has been putting extra hours in for free to get the hours he needs to pass, but he won’t be taken the piss out of.