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Hold the Phone! Perioperative Personal Electronic Devices

  • Patient Safety in Anesthesia (SJ Brull and JR Renew, Section Editors)
  • Published:
Current Anesthesiology Reports Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Purpose of Review

The purpose of this review is to illustrate the use of personal electronic devices among health care practitioners in the perioperative environment. It highlights the benefits of these devices as well as the potential risks to patient care.

Recent Findings

Personal electronic devices like smartphones have become ubiquitous in day-to-day life, and their utility has become indispensable to many industries. Within health care, they show promise to improve provider knowledge, communication, and adherence to best practices. Targeted applications for these devices demonstrate endless capacity for adaptation to specific provider and patient care needs. However, personal electronic devices pose the potential for distraction, contamination, and breaches of patient confidentiality within the operating room environment.

Summary

Personal electronic devices have the potential to improve health care provider efficiency, care coordination, and task management; however, this is not without risk. Ultimately, the effect of the presence of these devices in the operating room on patient outcomes remains to be seen.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine, Mayo Clinic, 4500 San Pablo Road, Jacksonville, FL, 32224, USA

    Christine Moshe & Steven Porter

  2. Department of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine, St. Luke’s University Health Network, Bethlehem, PA, USA

    Christopher R. Roscher

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  1. Christine Moshe
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Correspondence to Christine Moshe.

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Conflict of Interest

Christine Moshe, Steven Porter, and Christopher Roscher declare they have no conflict of interest.

Human and Animal Rights and Informed Consent

All reported studies/experiments with human or animal subjects performed by the authors have been previously published and complied with all applicable ethical standards (including the Helsinki declaration and its amendments, institutional/national research committee standards, and international/national/institutional guidelines).

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Moshe, C., Roscher, C.R. & Porter, S. Hold the Phone! Perioperative Personal Electronic Devices. Curr Anesthesiol Rep 12, 476–483 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40140-022-00541-1

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