We'd all rather spend our time dillydallying on our cellphones than lock in on the clock and do what we're paid to do. Many roles often allow this leniency if your workload is on the lighter side. If you work in the medical field, however… You never really catch a break.
Having your phone on at the hospital is a negative distraction and will steal some much-needed attention from patients you're seeing, that's a fact. Not only is texting on the clock unprofessional, but it can also put your patient in danger. Nurses are there to protect people from severe medical events, not make them more susceptible to them.
The clinic nurse in the story below knows this, so she mutes her family group chat while she's on shift and makes a point to check it at lunch when she has the time to do so safely. When the nurse checks her phone during one of her shifts, she sees that she has over 60 messages from the group chat, with members exclaiming that there is an emergency. That time-sensitive emergency? Someone needed a ride to the dentist. Did they expect her to leave work in the middle of triage? Some people cannot escape their own entitlement…
Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.
