Nurse Survey: Mobile Tech Unreliable

HDM Breaking News, December 17, 2007

 

Sixty-four percent of nurses believe their organization's wireless infrastructure isn't reliable enough to support point-of-care computing, according to a recent survey. Further, the nurses sometimes have to log in and out of their wireless clinical systems up to 80 times a day because of frequent dropped connections as a result of dead zones or poor access point transitions, according to the survey.

Menlo Park, Calif.-based Spyglass Consulting Group conducted the survey, titled "Healthcare without Bounds: Point of Care Computing for Nursing. The study is a followup to one conducted in 2004 concerning barriers to mobile tech adoption.

The firm conducted 100 telephone interviews with nurses working in acute care and ambulatory environments for the most recent survey. The interviews were conducted over a four-month period beginning last April with a random sample of nurses representing a range of specialties and institution sizes.

It also found that 76% of acute care nurses using mobile carts were actually using them as fixed workstations in hallways because they considered them too bulky to maneuver in patient rooms. For more information, go to spyglass-consulting.com. 

For more information on related topics, visit the following channels:

• Mobile Tech
• Web Technology