Ashvind Bawa, MBBS, MS, FMAS, Atul Mishra, MBBS, MS, FRCS, Amandeep Singh Nar, MBBS, MS, FMAS
Dayanand Medical College and Hospital, Ludhiana
Introduction
Smartphones are becoming an integral part of everyone’s lives. Mobile phones whose primary purpose is calling and staying in touch with friends and family can do much more now. With the launch of mobile devices by Apple, Samsung, HTC, etc. there has been a technological boom everywhere, even India is not spared.
Objective of the study
The purpose of this presentation is to gauge the use of smartphones in our surgery wards by both residents and physicians as an important pocket tool for conducting day-to-day activities and communication. The study holds significance in how smartphones can improve patient care and increase the efficiency and functioning of a surgeon and also improve resident as well as patient education.
Description of the methods
The smartphone is an all in one device – a telephone, messaging system, net browser, camera, documentation device, ebook reader, and patient education tool. The increasing use of smartphone has lead to improving resident efficiency as well has played a pivotal role in improving resident education. With a boom of apps available for the physician, the role of the smartphone is ever increasing even in India. Apps like Calculate by QxMD is a useful tool for making quick calculations like calculating BMI, Burns formula, and confirming patient safety with WHO safe surgery checklist. Communication apps like whatsapp helps in quick transfer of images across mobile phone platforms for quick assessment and advise from senior surgeons and colleagues. The advent of cloud computing has made data storage and usage a boon for surgeons with apps like dropbox and icloud providing a trouble-free solution to save presentations, images to be used anywhere in the world. With the improvement in optics and megapixels of smartphones, the use of a separate digital camera is becoming obsolete, making the smartphone an important pocket tool in a surgeon’s pocket. Apps like DrawMD are useful tools for patient education.
Conclusions
The smartphone boom is here to stay and will form an imminent tool in a surgeons armory.
Session: Poster Presentation
Program Number: P189
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