Call for mobile phone use to be allowed in hospitals
FOR THOSE WHO have experienced sneaky texting under the duvet at night or hidden behind a commode to call your loved one your strife has ended with the call for wider use of mobile phones in hospitals.
Despite years of warnings that if you use your mobile in a hospital you could kill someone by interfering with their life-support machine, it appears you can now actually make safe calls from your sick-bed.
The new guidance has been issued by the Department of Health today and states that hospitals in England should be more liberal, giving patients, staff and visitors the widest possible use of mobile phones.
These new rules come with a proviso that you are allowed to use a mobile as long as it doesn't interfere with equipment, the privacy of others or cause a nuisance.
But, wait, does that not sound like the previous regulation? As the old rules state exactly the same thing, and amount to the same thing – the only place you can use your phone without breaking any of these rules is outside.
The areas where you are seemingly allowed to use your device will be clearly marked throughout the hospital and restricted areas such as where critical care equipment is in use will be strictly mobile-free.
Health Minister Ben Bradshaw said: "Close support and comfort from loved ones when you are poorly in hospital is essential. Mobiles phones are commonplace in everyday life these days and people have told us that they'd like to be able to use their phones more in hospital to keep in touch.”
Well yes, we’ve been saying that for years Ben, but nothing’s been done about it as it was apparently life-threatening. µ
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In the last year I've been incarcerated in two local hospitals. One didn't let me have my phone, my Nintendo DS or any 'hazardous electrical equipment', so I couldn't make calls, read my ebooks, or play to distract myself. The other let me have my phone so that I could contact my loved ones and listen to music/browse on Opera Mini, and my DS to read books and play on.
Even though the last stay was twice as long and ten times as painful at least I didn't feel cut off, or as if I was going mental from boredom and pain.
My next door neighbour was in hospital for 6 weeks last year and his partner ran up a £700 mobile bill calling through Patientline. Glad that will be a thing of the past now.
I work in a hospital in Australia. We use mobiles all over the hospital, that is how they track us down to give us more work. They still have the no mobile phone signs around but no one really pays any attention, even in the theatres.
I too work in a hospital in Australia. All the medical staff use their mobiles. I could possibly agree with the notion that if there hundreds more people all using their mobile at the same time (ie. patients and family) and they were by some chance near a sensitive piece of equipment, that something 'could' happen. But as far as I know, all the medical equipment made today has to withstand mobile phone interference anyway.
Lest you suffer from Phonophobia, a collect call for Mrs. Floyd from Mr. Floyd. Will you accept the charges? He hung up. Is this your residence, sir?
I wonder why he hung up...
There must be someone else there
besides your wife to answer.
Hello?
This is the United States calling.
Are we reaching?
See he keeps hanging up.
But it's a man answering. We can get you new management in short order... Well. I guess we'll have to get that Brown fellow on the line. Where did this cold air come from? I did not expect such a chilly reception... Stuck upside-down with ski trousers round the ankles, I suppose. Yeah. A brownsnout spookfish, apparently.