Pattern and ill effects of mobile phone use among nursing students

Mobile phone is a device providing two-way communication. Signal transmission is the very basic concept for mobile phone. Mobile phone increases the risk of causing biological damage through heating effects. Mobile phone causes symptoms including headaches, ear ache, blurring of vision, short-term memory loss, and numbness, tingling and burning sensations, bad sleep, fatigue & anxiety.

The Aim of study was to assess the pattern and ill effects of mobile phone usage among nursing students and to find association with demographics of nursing students

A non experimental study was conducted on 100 nursing students to assess pattern and ill effects of use of mobile phones among nursing students. A semi structured rating scale questionnaire was used to collect data from nursing students who met with an inclusion criteria in SPHE College of nursing, Gharuan Mohali..

Highest percentage i.e. 74% mobile phones were given by their fathers, most (58%) were recharging card per monthly, highest percentage (74%) nursing students used mobile phones from past 3 years, highest (60%) students average time used on phone was less than 2 hours in a day, Highest (93%) students had their average billing per month less than Rs 500, Highest (77%) nursing students were always using their mobile phone at nights and Highest (61%) students can live without a mobile phone in a day. 56% nursing students had given reason for using of mobile phones that they feel safe. According to medical side effects of mobile phone use, highest (64%) students said that mobile phone had medical side effects. 37% nursing students gave 1st rank to calling. Majority of nursing students (78%) had used camera less than 30 min in a day. Majority of students 66% were moderate users, 20% were mild users and only 14% were excessive users. The findings also shows that 52% nursing students had eye stress, 32% had headache, 23% had earache, 18% suffered from sleep disturbance, 14% had short term memory loss, 9% had fatigue, 6% had dizziness and blurring of vision, 4% had numbness and tingling and burning sensation and 3% had anxiety. The Chi-square test reveals that there was no significance association found between level of use of mobile phone function among nursing students with their demographic variables(p<0.05).

Majority of nursing students were moderate mobile phone users. There was no significant association found between the level of mobile phone used among nursing students score when compared to Age, Gender, Residence, Family income, Nursing course, Class, accommodation.