It’s an issue they say has gotten little attention until recently. No federal regulations or industry-wide quality measures address phone use in healthcare settings in general or in the O.R. specifically. And no group tracks whether hospitals have adopted rules for cellphone use.

But as people become increasingly glued to their phones, the lack of guidance could have big consequences.

Diagnosing the problem is easy, said Peter Papadakos, a professor of anesthesiology, surgery, neurology, and neurosurgery at the University of Rochester, who has written extensively on the subject. “Once we get into or start using our cellphones, we separate ourselves from the reality of where we are,” he said. “It’s self-evident: If you’re staring at a phone, you’re not staring at the monitors.”

This reality attracted national attention last year, when a doctor at New York’s Yorkville Endoscopy clinic snapped cellphone pictures during an operation on the comedian Joan Rivers, according to a federal investigation. The surgery, a throat procedure, went awry—an outcome the investigation didn’t directly link to the doctor’s phone use—and ended up cutting off Rivers’s oxygen supply. She went into cardiac arrest and died on September 4.

“It’s very important that the surgical teams be concentrating on the patient during the surgical event,” said Ramona Conner, the editor in chief of the practice guidelines for the Association of Perioperative Nurses.

In 2012, the ECRI Institute, a nonprofit that focuses on healthcare quality, listed cellphone distraction among the top 10 risks that technology could pose to patient safety.

Because people can check their phones for both personal information and work-related material, it’s easy for the devices to distract providers, said Bob Wachter, a professor of medicine at the University of California at San Francisco and an expert in patient safety.

“It’s not that different from texting and driving,” he said. “There are supposed to be no distractions.”

Bringing one’s phone into the O.R. is common, Conner said.

Some hospitals have attempted to address the issue. The University of Rochester Medical Center requires staff to keep phones silenced when working with patients and forbids using phones for personal matters while at any “clinical work stations,” not just operating rooms.

Specific enforceable directives for the O.R. aren’t commonplace, but “more and more hospitals are playing catch-up” in developing policies, said the cardiologist Chandan Devireddy, an associate professor of medicine at Emory University.

He oversees a catheterization laboratory—where patients undergo cardiac procedures—and enforces a rule that staffers cannot check email or browse the internet during cases. At least once a year, his department discusses social media and appropriate cell-phone use.