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Mobile phones of paediatric hospital staff are never cleaned and commonly used in toilets with implications for healthcare nosocomial diseases
An ever-increasing number of medical staff use mobile phones as a work aid, yet this may pose nosocomial diseases. To assess and report via a survey the handling practices and the use of phones by paediatric wards healthcare workers. 165 paediatric healthcare workers and staff filled in a questionna...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Nature Publishing Group UK
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8217495/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34155278 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-92360-3 |
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author | Olsen, Matthew Lohning, Anna Campos, Mariana Jones, Peter McKirdy, Simon Alghafri, Rashed Tajouri, Lotti |
author_facet | Olsen, Matthew Lohning, Anna Campos, Mariana Jones, Peter McKirdy, Simon Alghafri, Rashed Tajouri, Lotti |
author_sort | Olsen, Matthew |
collection | PubMed |
description | An ever-increasing number of medical staff use mobile phones as a work aid, yet this may pose nosocomial diseases. To assess and report via a survey the handling practices and the use of phones by paediatric wards healthcare workers. 165 paediatric healthcare workers and staff filled in a questionnaire consisting of 14 questions (including categorical, ordinal and numerical data). Analysis of categorical data used non-parametric techniques such as the Chi-squared test. Although 98% of respondents (165 in total) report that their phones may be contaminated, 56% have never cleaned their devices. Of the respondents that clean their devices, 10% (17/165) had done so with alcohol swabs or disinfectant within that day or week; and an additional 12% respondents (20/165) within that month. Of concern, 52% (86/165) of the respondents use their phones in the bathroom, emphasising the unhygienic environments in which mobile phones/smartphones are constantly used. Disinfecting phones is a practice that only a minority of healthcare workers undertake appropriately. Mobile phones, present in billions globally, are therefore Trojan Horses if contaminated with microbes and potentially contributing to the spread and propagation of micro-organisms as per the rapid spread of SARS-CoV-2 virus in the world. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8217495 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group UK |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-82174952021-06-22 Mobile phones of paediatric hospital staff are never cleaned and commonly used in toilets with implications for healthcare nosocomial diseases Olsen, Matthew Lohning, Anna Campos, Mariana Jones, Peter McKirdy, Simon Alghafri, Rashed Tajouri, Lotti Sci Rep Article An ever-increasing number of medical staff use mobile phones as a work aid, yet this may pose nosocomial diseases. To assess and report via a survey the handling practices and the use of phones by paediatric wards healthcare workers. 165 paediatric healthcare workers and staff filled in a questionnaire consisting of 14 questions (including categorical, ordinal and numerical data). Analysis of categorical data used non-parametric techniques such as the Chi-squared test. Although 98% of respondents (165 in total) report that their phones may be contaminated, 56% have never cleaned their devices. Of the respondents that clean their devices, 10% (17/165) had done so with alcohol swabs or disinfectant within that day or week; and an additional 12% respondents (20/165) within that month. Of concern, 52% (86/165) of the respondents use their phones in the bathroom, emphasising the unhygienic environments in which mobile phones/smartphones are constantly used. Disinfecting phones is a practice that only a minority of healthcare workers undertake appropriately. Mobile phones, present in billions globally, are therefore Trojan Horses if contaminated with microbes and potentially contributing to the spread and propagation of micro-organisms as per the rapid spread of SARS-CoV-2 virus in the world. Nature Publishing Group UK 2021-06-21 /pmc/articles/PMC8217495/ /pubmed/34155278 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-92360-3 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . |
spellingShingle | Article Olsen, Matthew Lohning, Anna Campos, Mariana Jones, Peter McKirdy, Simon Alghafri, Rashed Tajouri, Lotti Mobile phones of paediatric hospital staff are never cleaned and commonly used in toilets with implications for healthcare nosocomial diseases |
title | Mobile phones of paediatric hospital staff are never cleaned and commonly used in toilets with implications for healthcare nosocomial diseases |
title_full | Mobile phones of paediatric hospital staff are never cleaned and commonly used in toilets with implications for healthcare nosocomial diseases |
title_fullStr | Mobile phones of paediatric hospital staff are never cleaned and commonly used in toilets with implications for healthcare nosocomial diseases |
title_full_unstemmed | Mobile phones of paediatric hospital staff are never cleaned and commonly used in toilets with implications for healthcare nosocomial diseases |
title_short | Mobile phones of paediatric hospital staff are never cleaned and commonly used in toilets with implications for healthcare nosocomial diseases |
title_sort | mobile phones of paediatric hospital staff are never cleaned and commonly used in toilets with implications for healthcare nosocomial diseases |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8217495/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34155278 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-92360-3 |
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