The cell within the wards

Like any legend, those involving cell phone use in hospitals are based on a kernel of truth. Hospital administrators have prohibited mobile phones because of concerns about electromagnetic interference. But Soto found the only genuine problem involved using a phone behind a ventilator. If answered near the breathing machine8217;s on-off switch, the ventilator shuts off. Soto said the key is keeping phones turned off in the vicinity of ventilators.

Pagers remain the communication device of choice in hospitals, Soto said, because 8216;8216;pagers are passive receptive devices. They don8217;t put out any power, whereas your cell phone, when you hit the send button or answer button, emits energy, and that8217;s electromagnetic energy. But it8217;s crazy when you think about this urban myth of cell phones harming people with pacemakers. Guess what? There are a lot of people with pacemakers walking around talking on cell phones.8217;8217;

He decided to conduct a study to develop a sense of how doctors communicate in hospitals, and whether older communication systems are more likely to result in errors. 8216;8216;8217;The old TV medical dramas can really give you a good picture of what it used to be like,8217;8217; Soto said. 8216;8216;Back in the 1950s, when anyone needed a doctor, you could hear people being paged overhead. It was just a constant din of paging. 8230; So you also can understand why in the 8217;70s they went to pagers,8217;8217; that would beep the physician. 8216;8216;But we8217;re still stuck in the 8217;70s,8217;8217; he said.

In the current issue of the journal Anesthesia and Analgesia, Soto concludes that cell phones can improve the relay of information. At a meeting of the American Society of Anesthesiologists, he distributed surveys to doctors. Of the 4,018 physicians who responded, he found that 65 percent use pagers. Only 17 percent relied on cell phones. Among pager-users, 45 percent said they experienced delays in communications. By comparison, 31 percent of cell phone users reported delays. Mobile phone use by anesthesiologists, Soto said, reduces the risk of medical error and injury.

Dr Michael Imhoff of Universitat Dortmund in Germany, who critiqued Soto8217;s study, underscored fears about electromagnetic interference. Still, he said the time may have come for cell phone use in hospitals. 8216;8216;The use of mobile phones in hospitals should be restricted to healthcare professionals,8217;8217; he said. Visitors and patients should use them only in designated areas, Imhoff said, to limit risk of electromagnetic interference and to reduce annoyance from private phone conversations.

LAT-WP