Achampong Emmanuel Kusi, Keney Gabriel, Attah Nathaniel Ofori
Department of Medical Education & IT, School of Medical Sciences, University of Cape Coast, Cape Coast, Ghana.
Directorate of Academic Planning and Quality Assurance, University of Cape Coast, Cape Coast, Ghana.
Online J Public Health Inform. 2018 Sep 21;10(2):e210. doi: 10.5210/ojphi.v10i2.9333. eCollection 2018.
Information technology has become an inevitable, constitutive element of the healthcare institution as well as health education. This study investigates the effects of mobile phone use in clinical practice at the Cape Coast Teaching Hospital. The use of mobile phones to access health information by health professionals has the potential to improve the provision of health service to the population. In addition, primary care physicians can use mobile phones to communicate with their patients before and after they are discharged, thereby improving the health of individual patients and the population at large.
The study adopted the cross-section survey design and obtained data using questionnaire from 100 medical students (medical, nursing and midwifery students) through purposive sampling procedure. Descriptive statistics and Pearson Chi-square were used for the analysis.
The results show that 98% of the respondents owned smartphones, thus, they are receptive to and can confidently use their phones to access medical information (65%). It also emerged that, respondents can render effective and continuous service to clients (90%) with assistance from mobile medical apps. Respondents dispelled fears that it was unethical to always depend on mobile apps for medical information. However, there was no significant relationship between using mobile apps to access medical information and ensuring effective and continuous service to clients (p≤ 0.937).
In spite of high patronage of mobile phone, respondents maintained that accessing mobile phones during medical practice does not interfere with the service delivery, rather it facilitates effective and continuous service, speed up access to healthcare information and helps to increase knowledge as well as improve care giving skills. Mobile phone use can ensure quick communication between health facilities and health professionals which can help control diseases of public health concern thereby improving the health of the population.
信息技术已成为医疗机构以及健康教育中不可或缺的组成部分。本研究调查了在海岸角教学医院临床实践中使用手机的影响。卫生专业人员使用手机获取健康信息有可能改善对民众的医疗服务提供。此外，初级保健医生可以在患者出院前后使用手机与他们沟通，从而改善个体患者以及广大民众的健康状况。
本研究采用横断面调查设计，通过目的抽样程序使用问卷从100名医学生（医学、护理和助产专业学生）处获取数据。使用描述性统计和Pearson卡方检验进行分析。
结果显示，98%的受访者拥有智能手机，因此，他们乐于且能够自信地使用手机获取医疗信息（65%）。还发现，受访者在移动医疗应用程序的帮助下能够为客户提供有效且持续的服务（90%）。受访者消除了总是依赖移动应用程序获取医疗信息是不道德的担忧。然而，使用移动应用程序获取医疗信息与确保为客户提供有效且持续的服务之间没有显著关系（p≤0.937）。
尽管手机使用率很高，但受访者认为在医疗实践中使用手机不会干扰服务提供，相反，它有助于提供有效且持续的服务，加快获取医疗保健信息的速度，有助于增加知识并提高护理技能。使用手机可以确保卫生机构与卫生专业人员之间的快速沟通，这有助于控制公共卫生关注的疾病，从而改善民众的健康状况。
