Technology, especially mobile technology, has done a lot of great things for the healthcare space. It's made record keeping and patient tracking easier, and it's helped providers make almost continual leaps and bounds in quality improvement, safety and value creation.
It can also be a dangerous temptation.
A few weeks ago, the particulars surrounding Joan Rivers' death grew more unsettling. An anonymous staff member at Yorkville Endoscopy alleged that Ms. Rivers' ENT physician snapped a selfie with the comedienne while she was anesthetized after an unauthorized biopsy. Ms. Rivers subsequently stopped breathing and was transferred to Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, where she later died. The selfie incident is unconfirmed, though the allegations are enough to raise concern about where the physician's attention was truly paid while Ms. Rivers was on the operating table.
Last year, at Torrance (Calif.) Memorial Hospital, an anesthesiologist and nurse's aid covered an anesthetized patient in stickers and snapped her picture, thinking she'd be amused (she was a former hospital employee). Instead, she sued.
In a 2011 incident, an anesthesiologist at Medical City Dallas became distracted on a mobile device during a multi-hour surgery, according to the attending surgeon. He failed to notice the patient's dangerously low oxygen levels until 10 or 15 minutes after she her skin began to turn blue. The woman was pronounced dead during the surgery, a routine heart procedure.
However, the surgeon testified he hadn't thought much of the anesthesiologist's actions at the time. "You know, we see this sort of thing with these procedures. I mean, they're long procedures. We see this kind of thing, and usually…it doesn't seem to be a problem with relatively short procedures. What can I say? I mean, it happens," he said in his testimony taken for the subsequent lawsuit, filed by the patient's family against the anesthesiologist, surgeon and hospital.
The anesthesiologist, in his deposition, later said that while he didn't think surfing the Internet or social media during treatment was the best idea, it could be done. "I could do it safely," he said, according to a report from the Dallas Observer. The lawsuit is still pending.
This attitude is a huge problem. And almost everyone — in healthcare or otherwise — is guilty.
If it's possible to use technology for work-related purposes with minimal incidents, what's the real problem with doing the same thing — sending a text or email or scanning a quick Facebook post or two — on personal accounts? If a provider can handle professional distractions, what's to say he or she can't handle personal ones?
As tempting as it may seem, this attitude can kill. It's evident in something as simple as walking. Texting pedestrians lose their ability to walk in a straight line and are more likely to run head-on into obvious obstacles, according to one study. Whether they intended to or not, texters' physical and mental systems "prioritized texting" over all other cues in an environment.
There's no mystery: Mobile technology is a real distraction, no matter a tech user's intentions. But, a legislative (and often procedural) precedent for responsible personal technology use doesn't exist, at least not in healthcare. The problem then gives way to the murky ethics of user discretion, fine-line judgments and the elusive alchemy of balancing distraction with performance. It's not illegal to text in the operating room, even though it is illegal to text while driving in most states. Distracted medical treatment simply has less exposure than distracted driving There is no #x for healthcare1.
But maybe there should be.
While unplugging is a challenge everywhere, it's particularly important for healthcare professionals to master the self-discipline to make it happen. It's also incumbent on all healthcare institutions to take the issue seriously and help their practitioners make the right choices and develop responsible habits. Why? Because human nature leads people to make mistakes, patients have the right to the safest care possible, and because in healthcare, whether you love or hate them, mobile electronics are here to stay.
1. AT&T's campaign to stop texting and driving. Texters respond #x to any conversations they're having, so the other half of the conversation knows they're about to operate a vehicle.