Cell Phones and Tablets Helping Spread Infection

Dr. Peter Papadakos, an anesthesiologist and critical care specialist at the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York, has become something of a crusader against mobile devices in hospitals.

A man well into middle age, Papadakos describes cell phone use as an addictive behavior and laments that at a recent lunch with his son at a waterfront restaurant, few in the room were taking in the view of anything but their small screens.

“I was probably one of the first people to bring this up and I’ve always been amazed how that occurred,” Papadakos said, but “I’m not the lone crier out there.”

Papadakos paints a terrifying portrait of mobile devices as an army of pocket-sized Trojan horses traveling in and out of the hospital and between rooms, spreading germs along the way.

Nurses and doctors might show a patient some lab results on an iPad, then touch the device later in the day without washing it first. They might also touch their phone before or after washing their hands between patients.

Hospital visitors can also contribute to the problem. They may have a friend or loved one in intensive care scroll through photos on a phone or tablet. When they leave the hospital, they may carry multiple-resistant staph bacteria on their touchscreen.

“There is some theory,” Papadakos said, that the two nurses who contracted Ebola in a Dallas hospital “got the virus from a contaminated surface.” 

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