Patient Attitudes Toward Mobile Device Use by Health Care Providers in the Emergency Department: Cross-Sectional Survey

BACKGROUND: Health care provider usage of mobile devices is increasing globally; however, there is little understanding of patient perceptions on this behavior in a health care setting. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to assess patients’ attitudes toward mobile device usage by health care providers in the emergency department and to identify predictors of these attitudes. METHODS: The study was carried out at the emergency department of a large academic tertiary care medical center in Lebanon. A cross-sectional survey design was adopted by administering a questionnaire to medically stable adult patients who presented to the emergency department with an emergency severity index of 3, 4, or 5 between January 2017 and March 2018. The questionnaire collected relevant patient demographic information and included questions related to their mobile device usage along with those evaluating attitudes for the use of mobile devices by health care providers with respect to six major domains: role in health care, distraction potential, impact on communication, empathy, privacy, and professionalism. The attitude toward mobile device usage by health care providers in the emergency department was the main outcome variable. A stepwise logistic regression model was used to assess the association between the outcome variable and the demographic and attitude-related independent variables. RESULTS: Among the 438 eligible patients, 338 patients responded to the questionnaire for a response rate of 70.0%. Overall, 313/338 (92.6%) respondents agreed that mobile devices improve health care delivery, whereas 132/338 (39.1%) respondents were opposed to their usage by health care providers in the emergency department (95% CI: 34.0-44.4). The majority (240/338, 71.0%) of patients agreed that mobile devices are a source of distraction to health care providers in the workplace. Females (odds ratio [OR]=1.67, 95% CI: 1.00-2.78) as well as all patients (OR=2.54, 95% CI 1.36-4.76) who believed that mobile devices were a source of distraction, reflecting a lack of professionalism (OR=2.77, 95% CI 1.59-4.82) and impacting the provider’s ability to relate to the patient (OR=2.93, 95% CI 1.72-4.99), were more likely to agree that mobile devices should not be used in the emergency department. CONCLUSIONS: Patients’ negative attitude toward mobile device use in the emergency department is largely driven by patient gender (females), patient perception of the distraction potential of the devices, and their negative impact on the health care provider’s empathy and professionalism. The findings of this study shed light on the importance of encouraging stakeholders to impose a digital professionalism code of conduct for providers working in acute health care settings.