http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7811455.stm
In hospitals they have 'patient line' phones at many beds. You need to purchase a special card and put credit on it to use them. Until you register in this way, no one can even phone you directly. For many patients who are ill (!) and may find all this difficult or impossible, being able to use their own mobile (with all their friends' numbers programmed in) would be a vast improvement. A lot of people feel horribly isolated in hospital.
How are the "patient line" phones charged for?
I'm fishing, but may be the mobiles would interfere with electic equipment.
I was in hospital three weeks ago and was allowed to use my mobile. Isn't the most up-to-date thinking now that there isn't any interference risk?
At our local hospital mobiles are OK everywhere except near the ICU. I'm happy with that compromise.Originally Posted by filippo lippi
Seems (for once) our government agrees. Today's announcement
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-st...s-1228836.html
You have to buy a card that you can use for telephone your own TV. It has no use outside hospital and you have to apply for a refund to get any excess money left. The card is loaded with whatever credit you want - so it is like one of those pre-pay 'credit' cards.
Regarding electrical equipment - I don't think there is usually anything critical in a normal ward.
If people could use mobiles, maybe they could use them to pay for TV and other services. It would be a lot more convenient that the existing system.
Very slowly it seems people are realising that mobile phones are not the great hazard everyone thought they were - how many signs at petrol stations still tell you not to use a mobile while, erm, Brainiac proved that they wouldn't cause an explosion?
Of course, they will still be banned in areas where they are known to interfere with delicate equipment, but elsewhere, like general ward areas, they should be trouble-free.
The 'patient entertainment' are, it seems, genrally detested and under-used just about everywhere, and I personally think that when you're a patient you should get free TV and be allowed to use your mobile.
In NHS-speak, free translates to 'subsidised', as in 'free' parking at some hospital trusts which other trusts regard as subsidising the public! The NHS seems thoroughly confused about such matters as charging these days.
The original analogue mobile phones gave out a stronger signal. The current restrictions, which appear over zealous, may be a hangover from those days.Very slowly it seems people are realising that mobile phones are not the great hazard everyone thought they were - how many signs at petrol stations still tell you not to use a mobile while, erm, Brainiac proved that they wouldn't cause an explosion?
You mean the 100 mobiles all ringing in a caravan full of petrol fumes? Which they then proceeded to blow up using the static generated by a man removing his cagule? That one?
The Mythbusters carried out a similar experiment a few years ago.
As part of the preamble to the experiment, they talked to the person who collates all of the data from all forecourt fires in the U.S. (AFAIK)
In that guy's opinion, there had been no cases where the cause was likely to be a cell phone.
Whist there were forecourt fires where people had been using cellphones, this was only coincidental, and the ignition sources were usually naked flame or static charge.
He also explained how the static charged might be built up. In the U.S. it seems to be still common for fuel pumps to have latching valves, where the handle is squeezed open, and locks there, relying on the pressure cut off in the pump to cut the supply. The accompanying video showed people starting the refuelling, then sitting back in the vehicle. Sometimes repeating the manoeuvre once or twice until the pump cuts off.
The most likely explanation they came up with, was that the vapour expelled from the vehicle fuel tank during the refuelling, pooled around the pump, then the driver would grab the filler hose, discharging the static, and igniting the vapour.
Click. woosh. :D
They did that? I wouldn't want to be that man taking off his anorak!
It could happen mobile phones could interfere with electrical equipment. Ok, its probably a million-to-one chance, but you wouldn't want to be under the knife with some guy walking past the operating theatre phoning through to god knows who. Next thing you've got Tony Stockwell trying to contact you.
It shouldn't happen if the electrical equipment is constructed properly.
Any critical equipment has effective electromagnetic screening to prevent interference. There are plenty of potential sources of EM noise. Light switches and fluorescent tube fittings, wheelchair motors, defibrillators, are the first ones that spring to mind, and all of them, along with many other sources, create EM noise.
That's the one. Any TV show that regularly destroys caravans gets my thumbs up.
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