News Feature | October 1, 2014

Reference And Mobile Tech Gaining Acceptance With Nurses And Health Institutions

By Megan Williams, contributing writer

Mobile Tech Nurses And Health Institutions

The use of mobile in the healthcare environment adds a very much unneeded layer of complexity to the security equation. Add in BYOD issues, and you have a network nightmare that has left most institutions strictly controlling the use of mobile devices.

Wolters Kluwer Health, a leading global provider of information and POS solutions in healthcare, conducted a survey that examines the use of mobile devices, Internet, and social media among nurse practitioners. The study found overall, that nurses are using mobile devices at increasing rates, with 65 percent saying they currently use a device for professional reasons at work. It also found that 95 percent of organizations allowed nurses to reference websites and other online resources for clinical information in their work.

Nurses Interpreting Policy

Policy and perception can often be quite different, and the survey found that 84 percent of the nurses questioned believed that their organization’s policy permitted patient care staff to access public websites, social media included, to obtain general information to help in the treatment of patient conditions. This mobile device use is also taking up a rather large portion of nurse time, with 65 percent reporting that they use mobile devices for professional purposes in their work for at least half an hour a day, and 20 percent reporting two or more hours of use.

Judith McCann, chief nurse, Lippincott Solutions, Wolters Kluwer Health, Professional & Education states, “These findings largely mirror what we are seeing outside the hospital, that use of mobile devices to access online information, the Internet, and social sites are becoming part of the social fabric both personally and professionally. Although these findings may not reflect the actual policies of these institutions, what’s interesting are the perceptions of the nurses who work there, and what we learned is that nurses are frequently incorporating the use of mobile devices, online resources and, to some extent, social media into their daily workflow.”

More Insight Into Nurse And Organizational Behavior

Additional findings of the study include the following:

  • 89 percent of healthcare organizations allow nurses the use of online search engines at work.
  • 60 percent of respondents say they use social media to follow healthcare issues at work.
  • 86 percent say they follow healthcare issues on social media outside of work.
  • About half of the respondents say that their organization blocks access to social sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and YouTube via company networks.
  • Among the 95 percent of respondents who say they access health information at work, 48 percent say their healthcare institutions encourage nurses to access online resources; 41 percent allow for occasional use; and 5 percent only as a last resort.
  • Among those who use mobile devices at work, nurse managers, at 77 percent, are more likely to use them than staff nurses, at 58 percent.

One of the most popular reasons for access was drug information. According to McCann, the Nursing Drug Handbook was downloaded by more than 445,000 clinicians since 2012.

Going Deeper

You can view an infographic of the survey here and the full version here.

For developers looking to take advantage of clinical information trends in mobile access, read, “The ROI Of Mobile Apps For Your Clients.”