NHS staff cast the net wide when they go surfing online

Published on Wednesday 7 October 2009 10:11

THE websites of Amazon, Next clothes shop and the Evening News are among the most popular for NHS Lothian staff to surf while they are at work.

Health workers are also spending considerable amounts of time browsing for other jobs on the recruitment section of the NHS website, shopping in Marks & Spencer and even planning their next Haven holiday.

The Evening News has obtained the website traffic of NHS Lothian's computers, which also show the ESPC site and Wikipedia to be popular resources among doctors, nurses and other health staff.

On the plus side for health chiefs, the details released under Freedom of Information also reveal medical sites such as the NHS home page, doctors.net.uk, and toxbase.org – a resource about poisons and toxic substances – were also included in the top 100 most popular pages.

Health chiefs did stress that staff are permitted to access the internet for personal use during lunchtimes and other breaks.

NHS Lothian's director of human resources and organisational development, Alan Boyter, said: "The arrival of the internet has been a huge benefit to organisations like ours and the list of the top 100 sites accessed by our staff show how much it is used for work purposes.

"Like most employers we have a policy on internet use which allows staff to access approved sites before or after work, or at lunchtimes.

"As most of them are extremely busy, and may not have time to go out shopping into the high street, it's excellent that they can do things like buy books, look at fashions, plan holidays and keep up to date with the news in their own time.

"In common with other employers, we also have sensible procedures in place to monitor internet use and ensure this superb resource is used responsibly."

The range of websites were well spread out, with the top hit – the National NHS System – only accounting for 5.7 per cent of website traffic.

Checking online banking with the Royal Bank of Scotland, a spot of web shopping with Boots and booking rooms for hire via Edinburgh University also featured highly.

Female clothes resource asos.com and Littlewoods were well visited in the figures, which cover the last six months.

Mr Boyter added that some websites visited on public interest grounds were withheld from the document.

He added: "The translation and publication of these addresses could lead to attempts, which even if unsuccessful, could lead to a serious degradation of the service provided not only of NHS Lothian but of the NHS in Scotland."