[Background: Since 2022 HIFA is supporting mHEALTH-INNOVATE, an international research consortium exploring how health workers use their personal mobile phones to support their work. HIFA is the main platform for sharing experience and expertise on this topic. Your inputs over the coming days and weeks are crucial and will feed into high-level policy discussions at WHO. See https://www.hifa.org/news/mhealth-innovate-exploring-healthcare-workers-... ]
Our systematic review and primary research in Uganda points to several advantages of using mobile phones. Healthcare workers explain that they use their own mobile phones informally because these make it easier and faster to communicate with colleagues and patients and ultimately leads to better quality care. In Uganda, a policy maker describes it like this:
“Right now, a person working from deep far in Adjuman when they have a senior colleague [in the university hospital], they can simply reach out to that person and make consultations. So [informal use] has made consultations and therefore care for patients …. much better.” (Namaganda 2024).
In some low- and middle-income countries, healthcare workers also describe how they use their own phones informally to connect with patients and their families. This gives patients access to individual healthcare workers rather than being assigned to an available healthcare worker. In Kenya:
“.… peer mentors at Kenyatta [National Hospital] went to extraordinary lengths to make themselves available to their clients, including giving out their private phone numbers to clients they met at the hospital and when visiting patients in their homes” (Moyer 2014, in Glenton 2024).
However, one of the disadvantages of this type of informal phone use is that it can blur the boundaries between work and personal life as healthcare workers are always ‘on call’. A community nurse in Taiwan describes the following situation:
"One time during the holidays a patient had a nasogastric tube fall out after it was inserted ... The patient’s family continued sending me Line messages, asking me to visit them. This was during my nonworking hours, but it seemed that I had to go ... I felt a little conflicted. They can find you anytime.” (Chiang 2016, in Glenton 2024).
QUESTION: In your setting, have healthcare workers found ways similar to those in Kenya, Taiwan and elsewhere of using their mobile phones to help ensure easy access to colleagues and patients, while also protecting their personal life?
HIFA profile: Neil Pakenham-Walsh is coordinator of HIFA (Healthcare Information For All), a global health community that brings all stakeholders together around the shared goal of universal access to reliable healthcare information. HIFA has 20,000 members in 180 countries, interacting in four languages and representing all parts of the global evidence ecosystem. HIFA is administered by Global Healthcare Information Network, a UK-based nonprofit in official relations with the World Health Organization. Email: neil@hifa.org