[merlin]

Hello all,

I am new here and sought out this forum to gather some quick information from as many nurses in other places as possible. I am a nurse iin an Emergency Department in a small to mid sized county hospital in North Carolina. I am writing to ask if you have internet access at your work. I am asking because we do not, essentially our access has been blocked because of the actions of one hospital employee (not even a nurse) and I am involved in the fight to get it back. In the past I have used the internet at work for everything from Taber's online to pdr.org to babelfish (for quick and dirty spanish translations) and now the same information services group that has me spending 75% of my day at a very poor computer system to do mind numbing and poorly flowing charting has taken from me the single best information gathering tool ever created. I guess that tells you where I stand. If you can let me know if you have internet access, is it full or filtered, and any problems that have resulted from your access that would be great. If you don't have a problem naming your workplace that would help me, if you do not want to, I understand. Thanks in advance, I look forward to having some armament when I meet.

[cougarnurse]

Only certain people get access. The Administrator and the MDS coordinator. Oh, and the DON has been known to hit either of those computers, too.

'Cat'

[cassioo]

There is limited access at my hospital. The NM and above have it and it's in the library. We used to be able to get on but weren't suppossed to but someone got the password from a doctor and they'd get on at night. It is in our secretaries office also she does birth certificates.....they dont' want you bringing in your own laptop either to plug into a dialup. At the hospital my dad was at they used to have wireless access for families but now that's gone and you can't get a connection on dial up they say for medical records security....call me stupid but if I bring in my own laptop how does a hacker get medical records if I'm not in the hospital system? My hospital doesn't want you to because you could get someones record and put it on your computer....if I wanted somebody's record that badly I guess I could run off a copy on the copier...makes no sense to me. At another local hospital they have unlimited access

[MRS. ERNURSE]

We use to have internet access. Recently our ER director (one of our ER docs) discontinued it. Rumer has it that "the nurses" were avoiding patient care to surf the internet. I believe what happen was that it was one nurse that did that shopping online all day (and she admits it). It would have been nice if our ER director had enough guts to just simply write that person up if it bothered him so much. (this happen on day shift). It is unfortunate for the rest of us because I too like to use it for research. Now, I have to tell you....when the ER work load was at a quiet humm and all the orders were done, yes we surfed the internet. I would never ignore a patient just to check an ebay bid or check my e-mail that will obviously disinograte if not read in 30 seconds or less)

When I heard that ours was discontinued and why, there was only one co-worker's face that popped in my head......sad. Will we ever get it back? probably not. We'll just have to come up with something else to entertain ourselves at 3 in the morning when it is dead. Like CEU magazines. We'll just make better use of our time.

Anyways, good luck because this is sounding like a new hopital trend.

Mrs. Ernurse

[disholicious]

We have it on most of our computers with some sites being blocked (like ebay). BTW, has anyone expressed their opinions to the ER director in a professional manner?