Survey: 71 percent of US nurses use smartphones

According to a recent survey conducted by Wolters Kluwer Health’s Lippincott Williams & Wilkins (LWW), 71 percent of nurses are already using smartphones for their job. The survey included responses from 3,900 nurses and nursing students. About 66 percent of those nursing students surveyed said they use their smartphones for nursing school.iphone

Overall, 85 percent of the nurses and nursing students said they want a smartphone app version of LWW’s Nursing 2013 Drug Handbook. Some 87 percent of those surveyed said they would want a smartphone app version of the text as well as a print version.

This month LWW plans to launch its first mobile app version of the handbook. The new forthcoming app includes nearly 900 drug monographs addressing more than 3,000 generic and brand name drugs. The app also offers a dosage calculator, pill images, detailed monographs and weekly drug updates. The app will work on iPhone, iPad, and Android devices once it launches later this month.

Earlier this year the New York Times reported on the effects of the increased adoption of smartphones among students at nursing schools: “The most profound recent change is a move away from the profession’s dependence on committing vast amounts of information to memory. It is not that nurses need to know less, educators say, but that the amount of essential data has exploded,” the Times wrote.

In January Massachusetts General Hospital also announced plans to equip its nurses with iPhones thanks to a recent deal with Voalte. Voalte’s offering combines high-definition voice calls, critical care alarms and presence-based text features and is intended for use by staff in acute care hospitals in the US and Canada — especially nurses. The company has helped a number of healthcare facilities equip their nurses with smartphones, including, Cedars-Sinai, Nebraska Medical Center, Texas Children’s, Heartland Health, Huntington Hospital, and Sarasota Memorial.

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