65% of nurses in the USA use mobile phones as a professional tool at work

The large majority of healthcare centres in the United States accept the use of mobile ICTs by their nursing teams while they are working.  Furthermore, the nursing teams are incorporating the use of mobile devices, Internet information resources and the social networks in their work routines. This is what is shown by the results of the survey Mobile Device Internet and Social Media Use and Habits, which Wolters Kluwer made at the beginning of 2014.

Specifically, 95% of the institutions allow nurses to consult web sites and other Internet resources for the clinical information they need for their work.  What’s more, 48% of nurses in the United States assure that the centres where they work encourage them to use the resources on the net.  However health professionals must be made aware that they must only consider information based on proven and updated clinical evidence for their professional practice.

In fact an easy and rapid way to consult information on the net is via mobile phone. According to the study, 65% of nurses use their mobile devices (smartphones and tablets) for at least 30 minutes of their working day to look for clinical information to help them attend their patients.  Up to 20% of nursing professionals spend two or more hours using their mobile phones for this purpose. 

As for the professional category, it is the head nurses who most use mobile devices in their professional work (77%). 58% of nurses in lower categories use smart phones and tablets in their work.  

Regarding the use of social networks, six out of every ten nurses are present on the social networks to follow up on health questions from the workplace. 86% of the surveyed nurses also follow up on health issues on the social networks outside of work.  Nevertheless, half of the participants in the study regret that their workplaces forbid them to access Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or Youtube. 

Furthermore, most of the healthcare centres in the United States strictly forbid interactions between nurses and other health professionals with patients over the Internet. In FlashTicSalut you can read the Good Practice Guide for Nurses in Social Media, promoted by the National Council of State Boards of Nursing (NCSBN), which deals more broadly with this question. 

The results of the survey are summarised in the following infographic: