Topic 2: What strategies could be used to address the ways in which informal mobile phone use can blur boundaries between healthcare workers’ personal and work lives?
In our systematic review, several papers noted the following:
'Healthcare workers complain that the use of their personal phones for work blurs the boundaries between personal and professional life, as they are sometimes contacted by patients and colleagues at home, outside working hours, and this could be a significant disruption to their personal lives.'
This was assessed to be a high-confidence finding.
It would be helpful to better understand the details of this phenomenon. Which types of health workers in which countries are most affected, and to what extent? What is the impact of such interruptions on stress and mental health? What guidance (if any) is available to health workers and their supervisors with regards to contacting health workers when they are not on duty?
I asked ChatGPT 'What strategies can be used to protect employees from being contacted during their time off?' and it replied as follows:
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Good question — protecting employees' time off is critical for their well-being, productivity, and retention. Here are some strong strategies organizations can use:
Clear Policies About After-Hours Communication
- Set explicit rules: no emails, calls, or work chats during evenings, weekends, vacations, etc., unless it's an emergency.
- Define what counts as an emergency clearly.
Right to Disconnect Policy
- Many companies (and even countries like France and Canada) now have formal "Right to Disconnect" policies where employees are not obligated to engage with work communications off-hours.
- Incorporate this into your employee handbook.
Use Technology Tools Smartly
- Delay-send emails outside work hours.
- Set up automatic “out of office” replies that remind senders that employees are unavailable.
- Mute notifications in internal messaging platforms like Slack or Teams after hours.
Manager Training
- Train managers to respect boundaries — they model the behavior. If managers send late-night emails, others feel pressure to respond.
- Encourage managers to check in during work hours about workloads, so nothing spills over into personal time.
Shared Calendar Blocking
- Employees can block vacation days or non-work hours in shared calendars, signaling they are truly unavailable.
Cross-Training and Backup Coverage
- Ensure that critical tasks have backup personnel so no one is indispensable or constantly "on call."
Cultural Reinforcement
- Publicly recognize teams that respect boundaries.
- Make time-off truly valued — for example, leaders should also take (and protect) their own time off visibly.
Flexible Response Time Agreements
- If after-hours work is unavoidable in rare cases, create agreements like "responses only within X hours" so employees aren't glued to devices.
Anonymous Reporting Channels
- Allow employees to report managers or teams that disrespect time-off boundaries without fear of retaliation.
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ChatGPT even offers to provide a template for a policy.
All of the above seem helpful. Perhaps the most important factor is to have clear *written* policy guidance.
Best wishes, Neil
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