Is it coming from "check your gun at the bar" to "check your phone at the door"?

Don’t fall down a slippery slope dude. Phones are generally not a risk, but in hospitals, particularly ICU’s, they can disrupt some of the equipment, same reason why you have to turn your phone off on an airplane. I don’t think they’ll be banned outside ICU’s anytime soon.

You are sick; sick enough to be in the hospital. Do you really want someone talking at full voice about the latest party they went to and all the food and drink they had, or chatting about anything at all? This is trivial, obviously, to the technical reasons for the ban on phones on the wards, but let me be sick in peace, please. Go down stairs and talk.

Maybe they were worried about privacy issues for the other patients?
Would you want your picture on the internet?

I think possibly @Mariah is correct about the telemetry. Although, when my aunt was in the hospital she was allowed to use a cell phone, but it is not a smartphone, so that might make a difference. We also used our ipads. In fact wifi was free in the hospital.

I certainly hope so for all the reasons above !!! Jeez, isn’t there any place we can do with our phones???

@Pachyderm_In_The_Room I think their are some waterproof phones on the market that are meant to be used in the bathroom.

I don’t understand being upset about someone having a phone in a hospital. I am not glued to my phone at all, I sometimes don’t look at it for hours. I forget it sometimes when I leave the house. But, if I am at the hospital, I want to be able to communicate with friends and family and it would be noce not to pay the fee for phone service in my room. Texting is quieter than talking on the hospital phone.

Having a smartphone is an instant connection always available should one feel
the need to communicate in emergencies etc
(scary situations etc).

Sounds like the only solution is implants. Get your phone implanted into your head. Decapitation is messy and it scares the children.

If you were cooped up in a hospital waiting room for hours which person would you rather sit next to, the one jabbering away at full volume on a cell phone about Shaneequa’s party or someone reading a magazine with a completely concealed and silent carry weapon?

@talljasperman I have one of hose waterproof phones. I can drop it in the toilet and call it and it will work under water.

Like Mariah said there isn’t some conspiracy to keep you silent. There are actually machines that they believe could function improperly if a cell phone is around. And personally, I would rather err on the side of caution in a hospital.

@Luckyguy, if those are my only two choices in a hospital, I’ll stay at home!

It’s an equipment issue and a HIPAA issue. They have to have opaque clipboards at the hospital so people can’t accidentally see someone else’s medical documents. Sure you can take a picture of Mom and post it online, but if her bedmate didn’t want the world to know she’s laid up after a surgery, that’s a violation. The hospital has a responsibility to keep patients’ medical information private if at all possible.

And also, if I’m recovering from surgery, I really don’t want to hear Kanye West at full volume every time you get a text message.

Did this a take a turn towards stereotyping? Shaneequa and Kanye? I know people have a stereotype of black women wearing bluetooths and being on the phone when it is innapropriate. I’m talking stereotypes, I realize all sorts of people are on their phones at all hours of the day, all kinds of places. Maybe Kanye is more of a comment about young people on the phone and not race?

Young people, typically. Most adults are respectful enough to keep their phone on vibrate at least.

@LuckyGuy – I was at Shaneequa’s party. It was great. In fact, everyone was surprised that you weren’t there – people asked about you. I told people you had the clap and couldn’t attend.

@elbanditoroso Thanks for sending my regards and letting them know. I totally forgot to update my FB page about it. I was with Shaneequa the week before so Tyshaun and Diyon prolly haz it, too.

(Just for the record. I was in a doc’s office and was forced to listen to that kind of convo until the receptionist told her to shut it down.)

@Pachyderm_In_The_Room You are right about staying home. The biggest danger to a hospitalized patient is pneumonia.

When I had my surgery 3 years ago, I had my iPhone with me, thank goodness, because I’d have been bored otherwise (I HATE television). I do tell my patients to turn their devices off because the GSM signal does cause interference with audio equipment, on top of buzzes, beeps, rings, etc. disrupting the test.

@JLeslie – Kanye West is a popular hip-hop artist, and people of many ethnicities listen to hip-hop, and it is common to use music snippets for their ring tones and text tones.

@hearkat It’s just that when @LuckyGuy went with Shaneequa, already my antenna went up at his choice. You have to understand, the city I just moved from this was a huge stereotype. Then, just a couple days ago I saw 20 minutes of some show in Atlanta where they flip houses, and the only person who had that bluetooth on her ear was the black girl. Not her black husband or the person who funds the projects (looked like a Jewish guy just to add to the stereotypes) not any of the other workers. Then <said in an exaggerated tone> Kanye is mentioned. I myself said I know young people like rap/hip hop also, young people of all races and ethnicities, but I found it really frustrating going out to dance in Memphis, lots of black people in that market, because the music was all hip hop. Back here in FL, not so much. I’m happy to be back in the land of high energy runway music, Latin ritmo, and oldies but goodies.

You’re not going to tell me Shaneequa is white are you?

@JLeslie – The Shaneequa comment did seem to play to a stereotype, which is why I didn’t defend it, but @LuckyGuy said that he was referencing an actual conversation he was forced to overhear. I just defended the Kanye West ringtone comment because that is not a racist stereotype, since his popularity is multicultural; so I suspected that you might be unaware that an actual musical artist was being referenced by your overreaction.

@hearkat My reaction, or overreaction, as you call it, was meant to be tongue and cheek. Maybe I should have used a tilde in it somewhere. I am stereotyping also in what I wrote so I certianly am not going to be bothered by some other people doing it. I, like @LuckyGuy, have had personal experiences so the comments hit me a certain way. As I said, initially I also realized and wrote it might just be a comment about young people the Kanye thing. But, I for whatever reason I associate it with a black stereotype, even though I understand the intention of the person who said it might not be that.

@JLeslie – Yes, a tilde to indicate sarcasm would have helped. I honestly thought that you might not know who Kanye West is.

@hearkat This is what I wrote Did this a take a turn towards stereotyping? Shaneequa and Kanye? I know people have a stereotype of black women wearing bluetooths and being on the phone when it is innapropriate. I’m talking stereotypes, I realize all sorts of people are on their phones at all hours of the day, all kinds of places. Maybe Kanye is more of a comment about young people on the phone and not race?

Why do you think I don’t know who he is? I am lumping Kanye in with Shaneequa, I spell out well that Shaneequa is a black girl, I guess maybe I could have specifically written maybe Kanye is intended to be about young people and not black people. Still, wouldn’t I need to know who Kanye is to even write what I did write? That I know his audience is also young people?

I first wrote, did this Q take a turn towards racism, but then deleted it because I was afraid everyone would jump all over the word racism, so I toned it down.

I didn’t use the tilde because it is not really sarcasm in my comment. I just didn’t want it to come across as someone crying racism. People jump all over that word racism as being used too much (especially in politics) or ganging up on jellies who do say something that might sound racist. I did not want my comment to be perceived as though I was disgusted with what people wrote, but rather that I saw implications of race stereotyping.

maybe I should have said Ke$ha, instead…

@JLeslie: Geez, I simply misunderstood you. Can we let it rest? This is why I comment so infrequently, especially in response to other comments.

Sure. You’re right, I should not have dwelled on it.

As far as privacy, I once worked in a call center in a large home security firm. We weren’t restricted from having our phones in our possession, but we were prohibited from using them, even for music. The issue was information security.

One employee was written up for using his smart phone to assist a customer when system computers were down.