Navy: San Diego Phones

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Can anyone recommend a phone and/or provider and gets reliable reception inside Navy Hospital San Diego? My Tmobile might as well have been a brick during my audition rotation.

Sprint is the best reception in the hospital.


On the iPhone

NMCSD doesn't have pagers, they are part of the 21st century and you carry a cell phone. Specifically one from Sprint, who has outfitted the hospital with boosters throughout. Although for the most part my Verizon private phone did fine.

Does Sprint work well in San Diego in general?

Originally Posted by Perrotfish

Does Sprint work well in San Diego in general?

Doesn't work too well at my house or at my gym. I frequently have to call my residents back on my personal Verizon phone.

Can't speak for areas besides point loma.


On the iPhone

Originally Posted by megadon

NMCSD doesn't have pagers, they are part of the 21st century and you carry a cell phone. Specifically one from Sprint, who has outfitted the hospital with boosters throughout. Although for the most part my Verizon private phone did fine.

Command sponsored cell phones in my opinion suck. It's another phone to have to carry and if in addition there is a separate 'call' phone you could potentially be carrying three phones.....yippee

Anyone know if they still carry pagers at nmcp?

Yup, NMCP has crappy one way pagers. Your personal pagers can receive text pages, the call pagers are one line alphanumeric only. Much prefer the NMCSD cell phones and ability to be able to text back and forth instead of having to find a phone every time you're paged.

Originally Posted by backrow

Command sponsored cell phones in my opinion suck. It's another phone to have to carry and if in addition there is a separate 'call' phone you could potentially be carrying three phones.....yippee

It's no different than the call pagers. When on call you have your personal pager, the code pager, the cards admissions pager, and the medicine admissions pager. It looks like a suicide belt.

Originally Posted by megadon

It's no different than the call pagers. When on call you have your personal pager, the code pager, the cards admissions pager, and the medicine admissions pager. It looks like a suicide belt.

Yes, but pagers weigh about ten times less and you aren't expected to answer a pager immediately when it rings. You can finish your business in the bathroom without someone being all pissy about why you didn't answer by the second ring.

I much prefer the "I realize it may take a second to call me back "mentality of pagers.

As an attending I wonder what the expectation is about returning pages during off hours? Im in anesthesia.

Originally Posted by backrow

Yes, but pagers weigh about ten times less and you aren't expected to answer a pager immediately when it rings. You can finish your business in the bathroom without someone being all pissy about why you didn't answer by the second ring.

I much prefer the "I realize it may take a second to call me back "mentality of pagers.

Yeah but if you're the person calling you're stuck waiting by the phone you paged them to until they called back. So now the time I set aside to my business has gone to waiting for you to do your business.

Or even better, the departments where you're supposed to page everyone to a clerk, who then 'informs' you about the page. Nothing makes me feel like I'm on the cutting edge of medicine quite like having a 400 lb woman scream some variation of "Surgery, line 3!" at the top of her lungs. Every fifteen minutes. All day long.

Originally Posted by MTGas2B

Doesn't work too well at my house or at my gym. I frequently have to call my residents back on my personal Verizon phone.

Can't speak for areas besides point loma.


On the iPhone

Does your personal verizon phone work well in the hospital?

Some places. Not too well in the or, radiology, or any basement. Works well in the halls and in the icu.


On the iPhone

Having been on both sides of this issue, I am definitely in the I hate pagers camp, and for exactly the reasons you mention. I hate paging someone, that feeling anchored to the phone for the next 5 minutes while I can't page someone else. Plus the ability to send texts instead of having to page, wait for reply for inane discussion, saves those extra precious moments that I cherish spending spending with AHLTA doing Tcons. The joke used to be that that the only people who carried pagers were drug dealers and physicians. They wised up and bought iPhones while we stick with pagers that don't even necessarily work.

Another question: Does NMCSD have Wi-fi? If so how fast/reliable is it? Can I register my personal computer and phone for the hospital Wi-Fi network?

They do have wifi. It works in the wards. Doesn't work in the OR. Can use personal computer of iPhone/iPad. You can't permanently register, there is a web based fine terms of service and log in prompt that comes up every time.


On the iPhone