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Welsh hospitals get mobiles

It looks like the ban on mobile phones in hospitals is gradually crumbling. According to the BBC, another health trust has decided to remove a ban on phone use in hospital buildings, saying that it’s discovered devices can only affect medical equipment if very close to it.

The Beeb says that North East Wales NHS Trust’s total ban on video and cameraphone usage will remain and that hospital patients and visitors will have to keep their phones on silent, and switch them off if hospital staff tell them to.

I was under the impression that hospitals have long known that it was fairly unlikely mobiles would monkey around with their equipment and just kept a blanket ban on mobiles in place for etiquette reasons: after all, if you’re recovering from some terrible disease, listening to a Crazy Frog ringtone over and over again isn’t exactly going to speed your recovery.

8 COMMENTS

  1. To my knowledge 2G phones only cause problems with Life Support machines in Hospitals. Thats it nothing else. 3G phones dont affect anything. (Only here in UK being that 3G works on 2100mhz) Because its a lot higher on Frequency scale. My father is a Paramedic and has seen for his self that both his phone make no problems. It's just that Hospitals make a big song and dance!

  2. While the source of the original ban may have come from a misunderstanding of the effects of mobiles on Hospital equipment the current ban seems to be kept in place by the HUGE amounts of revenue the hospitals make by banning mobiles and renting you a bedside “entertainment unit” that happens to have a phone with an inbound non-geographic inbound number.

  3. Another ban that I hope is never lifted is the cinema's 'please turn off your mobile phone because it can interfere with the projection equiment'. I have worked with a projectionist who had his mobile phone grafted to his shoulder while he used both hands to thread up film in one projector while the other was showing the current reel of the feature a metre away.

  4. It's a step in the right direction, shame there's still a total ban on video calls and picture messages. Being able to see and hear friends and family from afar could be a boon to some and if everyone in the ward (including th patient) is cool, then what's the problem?

    Don't get me started on Patientline… ;o)

  5. Why are any mobiles allowed on wards anyway. Not only can they distract staff, but patients also run the risk of being filmed when they are at their most vulnerable.

    Only last week I went to visit my nanna in hospital and saw a youth messing about with his phone and making everyone on the ward extremely uncomfortable.

    Hospitals are just not a place for such gadgets.

  6. Why are any mobiles allowed on wards anyway. Not only can they distract staff, but patients also run the risk of being filmed when they are at their most vulnerable.

    Only last week I went to visit my nanna in hospital and saw a youth messing about with his phone and making everyone on the ward extremely uncomfortable.

    Hospitals are just not a place for such gadgets.

  7. Why are any mobiles allowed on wards anyway. Not only can they distract staff, but patients also run the risk of being filmed when they are at their most vulnerable.

    Only last week I went to visit my nanna in hospital and saw a youth messing about with his phone and making everyone on the ward extremely uncomfortable.

    Hospitals are just not a place for such gadgets.

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