Organizations in various spheres require their workers to communicate using digital technologies, and healthcare is not an exception. For example, as mentioned in the case study, nurses in a local home healthcare agency need to email and text physicians, the agency, and local hospitals. However, they use their personal cell phones for these purposes, which has both advantages and disadvantages. Therefore, their management needs to consider them before deciding whether to provide nurses with company devices.
To begin with, allowing nurses to use their own phones can actually be beneficial. For example, they are more familiar with their personal devices, which makes their work faster and easier (Vearrier et al., 2018). Second, nurses can take care of their own cell phones and update, upgrade, or fix them if necessary, which frees the company from this responsibility (McBride & LeVasseur, 2017). Further, some nurses state that using their personal devices is “benefiting patient care, improving coordination of patient care among the health care team, or increasing unit teamwork” (McBride & LeVasseur, 2017, para. 4). Consequently, it is a possible option for those nurses who are able to concentrate on their responsibilities and not get distracted.
At the same time, some severe disadvantages make employers provide nurses with company cell phones. For instance, some clinicians report experiencing negative effects of using personal devices for work purposes, including destructions, medical errors, and reduced performance (McBride & LeVasseur, 2017). What is more, nurses’ own smartphones can be connected to unsecured networks or not password protected, which increases the risk of patients’ personal data breaches. Consequently, it is recommended for healthcare facilities to base their decision on the level of responsibility of employees and particular circumstances (Vearrier et al., 2018). If I were to choose for the agency, I would probably provide the nurses with company devices to reduce the possibility of medical errors and distraction from duties.
References
McBride, D. L., & LeVasseur, S. A. (2017). Personal communication device use by nurses providing in-patient care: Survey of prevalence, patterns, and distraction potential. JMIR human factors, 4(2).
Vearrier, L., Rosenberger, K., & Weber, V. (2018). Use of personal devices in healthcare: Guidelines from a roundtable discussion. Journal of Mobile Technology in Medicine, 7(2), pp. 27–34.