People mess around with just about anything they can get their hands on- so what if the nurses send messages to each other and have fun? I'd be willing to give the people who take care of me a ream of paper if it meant they were in a good mood.
It has nothing to do with fun or messing around. It is about people being incentivized to avoid the tooling. I worked in US and Canadian health IT, my perspective is completely different from patient's. This may not have huge impact in high-end American hospitals, but in Canada where hospitals are underfunded and drowning in beuracracy it is a disaster
People mess around with just about anything they can get their hands on- so what if the nurses send messages to each other and have fun? I'd be willing to give the people who take care of me a ream of paper if it meant they were in a good mood.