Poll: Phone use in the field

Do you guys use your personal/work mobile phone in the field to make notes?

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    17
  • Poll closed .
lastdojo

lastdojo

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Hi everybody.

Full disclosure, this question comes from a non-EMT independent mobile app developer:

Do you guys use your personal/work mobile phone in the field to make notes? Are you even allowed to?
 
I use a little notebook pad or PCR or gurney sheet or anything else that I can write on.

Only time my phone comes out is to look up medications and to contact the hospital.
 
People are gross. Don't want to touch my phone after touching them until hands are washed.
 
I use the phone only to call ahead to certain hospitals/departments.

Using a phone for taking notes would be troublesome. Focusing on a cellphone will probably be seen as silly/disrespectful by someone somewhere, and cleaning the phone would probably be needed.
 
I don't use my phone to take notes.
 
My personal phone won't come out on a call. Our work phones won't download apps. Notes get taken on a glove/notebook/pcr.
 
Entering information about a call into my personal phone would violate patient confidentiality.
 
@cprted not quite true.
I have used the note app on my phone once or twice with patients, but it's a Galaxy Note 4 so I'm literally writing it on the screen and clearing it after (and usually therea no PHI in it anyway).
Otherwise I use a notepad I have or a piece of 3" tape on my left thigh to take notes, especially on messy and disgusting calls
 
I would never pull out my personal phone on a run. I would never make notes on a personal phone.

I would worry about privacy violations (HIPAA), I would worry about cross contamination and I would worry about phone damage/lost.

I think the majority of EMS providers would agree that an ap for note taking in the field would never be used and there would probably be a lot of rules created/enforced should an ap suddenly appear and workers attempt to use it within their service.

Great idea in theory and that is where it should remain.
 
Once in a blue moon I'll use my phone for navigation when doing mutual aid responses in a neighboring city I'm unfamiliar with. But usually even then I can look at the map on the MCT and see where I'm going via the big cross streets, otherwise if I need to take notes on scene I'll usually write on my glove. Absolutely no need for my phone to leave the ambulance.
 
I'll use my phone for navigation, calling hospitals, dispatch, or a supervisor. Like I said earlier, I don't take notes on my phone. As a paramdedic intern, all of my notes would be on the fire run sheet or back of ECG paper if we were first on scene.
 
I'll call the hospital or dispatch on my phone and I use drug references on it as well. Never had a problem so long as I prefaced what I was doing with it to the patient, "Sir I don't recognize one of your medications, I'm going to look it up real quick."
 
While I had a cell phone during my time on the ambulance, the "smart phone" of today was well off... So I simply used it to call reports or call dispatch, or a supervisor. There never was any issue with me using my phone simply because there was no way I could enter PHI into the phone, therefore no HIPAA violation could occur if my phone were to ever be lost.

Now that I'm in hospital, I do use my phone for a few things, mostly for calculations or to look up something that I'm not familiar with. I rarely get my phone out though.
 
Mine stays in the front of the rig. My partner brings his in case we need to call dispatch or a supervisor, and even if he forgot his we still have two radios. The idea of using my phone in front of the pt seems very unprofessional. I wouldn't be a happy camper if a nurse or doctor whipped theirs out when I was their pt.
 
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