14 DAY TRIAL // A recent report published in the British Medical Journal suggested that doctors' pagers should be replaced with mobile phones because a total ban on cellular phones in hospitals is inappropriate and out of date. Previous official rules prohibited mobile phones, camera phones and video cameras in hospitals because these objects were thought to influence negatively doctors' work and also have an unwanted impact on patients. The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) had banned mobile phones' usage by doctors because the cellular phones could interfere with other medical devices and confuse physicians or surgeons while in the middle of an intervention.
"The Department of Health - for example, has recommended that camera phones should not be allowed in hospitals because they may undermine the privacy of patients, and it has also suggested that some ring tones might be mistaken for medical device alarms. The department concedes that identifying mobile camera phones might prove difficult and so, 'the control of camera phones may only be seen to be practically possible by preventing the use of mobile phones altogether,'" said Dr Stuart Derbyshire, co-researcher of the current study.
The two co-authors of the study Dr Stuart Derbyshire and Dr Adam Burgess of the University Of Kent School Of Social Policy writing in the BMJ paper state that concerns about mobile phones' inference with medical equipment have no basis and doctors should start to use cellular phones instead of pagers.
"Doctors and pharmacists would benefit from using mobile phones rather than pagers, and many patients in hospital would welcome the opportunity to relieve their isolation without resorting to expensive hospital phones that are cumbersome to use. We urge hospital managers and clinical directors to adopt a more flexible approach to the use of mobile phones on the basis that the advantages clearly outweigh their largely mythical risks," advised the University of Kent scientists.