SMART PHONE DEPENDENCY AND DIGITAL AMNESIA IN YOUNG NURSES AND QUALITY OF PATIENT CARE IN TERTIARY CARE HOSPITAL OF PAKISTAN

Abstract

The connection between smartphone addiction, digital amnesia, and patient care quality among young nurses working in the tertiary care hospitals in Pakistan is analysed in the research paper. Since the adoption of digital technologies in healthcare is increasingly becoming more of a fact, nurses tend to use smartphones to retrieve information, communicate, and offer clinical support. However, excessive dependency on these devices may lead to digital amnesia whereby individuals have become unable to utilize internal memory since they are forced to save data in external digital memory. The research design applied was quantitative cross-sectional and correlational and structured questionnaires were used to collect data on 100 registered nurses aged 21-35 years.These findings showed that the participants had an average to high level of smartphone addiction and digital amnesia. The patient care quality was significantly and negatively correlated with the smartphone dependency and digital amnesia, and there was a strong positive correlation between the smartphone dependency and digital amnesia. Regression analysis showed that digital amnesia was a significant predictor of poor patient care outcomes and it mediated the correlation between smartphone dependency and patient outcomes. The paper identifies the cognitive and clinical dangers of excessive smartphone use in nursing practice and the need to have a balanced approach to the use of digital tools, not to mention the steps to improve the memory and clinical judgment skills.