Abstract
BackgroundThere has been a rapid rise in the use of smart devices amongst medical practitioners throughout the world. This study aimed to identify how smart devices were being used by medical practitioners at the Universitas Academic Hospital (UAH), Bloemfontein, and the associated factors thereof. We also identified the views of medical practitioners regarding the usage of smart devices at their workplace.MethodsA prospective cross-sectional study was conducted. Anonymous questionnaires were distributed to medical practitioners working at UAH during weekly departmental meetings or monthly morbidity and mortality meetings. The following largest departments were included: Surgery, Anaesthetics, Paediatrics, Internal Medicine, Family Medicine, and Obstetrics and Gynaecology.ResultsThe response rate was 82.7% of those attending the meetings. All the respondents owned a smart device and brought it to their workplace. The most common applications used on these smart devices were that for drug references (65.9%), medical textbooks (63.6%) and medical calculators (58.1%). Significantly larger percentages of doctors aged 21–39 years compared with those aged 40–65 years used drug reference applications and medical calculators. A quarter (24.8%) of respondents communicated with patients through a smart device, 21.7% used an online storage platform to backup patient data, whilst 56.6% used their devices to store and view patient information. More than one-third (36.7%) agreed that smart devices threatened patient confidentiality, but the majority (58.8%) did not agree that these devices hinder patient communication. The majority felt that these devices improved both personal performance (69.2%) and patient care (79.0%).ConclusionSmart devices usage is common in this setting. Hence, integration of such usage in medical curricula, discussion on professionalism, ethics and confidentiality in this context, and guidance from institutions and professional bodies become necessary.
Highlights
There has been a rapid rise in the use of smart devices amongst medical practitioners throughout the world.[1,2,3,4]
In the 1990s, one would almost solely rely on pagers as the mode of connection between medical practitioners and other staff members within a hospital, but pagers are replaced by smart devices or personal digital assistants as mode of communication.[6]
The aim of this study was to identify the ways smart devices are being used by medical practitioners at the Universitas Academic Hospital (UAH), Bloemfontein, and the associated factors thereof
Summary
There has been a rapid rise in the use of smart devices (mobile devices such as tablets, laptops and cell phones) amongst medical practitioners throughout the world.[1,2,3,4] As a result, many applications have been developed to suit this rise and need. There has been a rapid rise in the use of smart devices amongst medical practitioners throughout the world. This study aimed to identify how smart devices were being used by medical practitioners at the Universitas Academic Hospital (UAH), Bloemfontein, and the associated factors thereof. We identified the views of medical practitioners regarding the usage of smart devices at their workplace
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