"Why do doctors need pagers?" question from a 10 year-old kid

This forum made possible through the generous support of SDN members, donors, and sponsors. Thank you.
TXDO

TXDO

Full Member
10+ Year Member
15+ Year Member
Joined
Jul 16, 2008
Messages
250
Reaction score
1
hi guys,
My young brother has a question that "why do doctors need pagers even though we have high tech phone like iphone or blackberry...?" I don't know how to explain to him, can anyone help me with this?

:DThanks
Members don't see this ad.
 
Go to a real underground basement and see if your cell phone still works there, it most likely won't. The paging network is much more reliable as you only need to send a very short message one way so this can be done with a much stronger signal. Also, the paging network runs at a different frequency which has much better penetration in buildings. Short, pager systems are built with reliability in mind, cell phone systems are not.
 
Pagers are also a lot cheaper. It costs me about the same for a year of pager service as it does for a month of iphone service.

They are highly reliable, cheap, and (I think the main reason) is that they set up something of a barrier. You get your page, and respond to it (or not) when you are ready.
 
Members don't see this ad :)
1. you rarely miss a page in a hospital, but you'll definitely miss cell phone calls. their battery life is also incredible - a AA battery will last you months. No worries about missing a page for that reason.
2. it considers that the other person might be busy - if you call, they have to answer or ignore it. with a page, they can just respond in 2 minutes.
3. you can pass them around easily. we hand off the consult pager on various services all the time. nobody's ever going to steal that thing, but someone might abscond with an iPhone.
4. if you answer your cell phone in the nurse's station, it looks like you're taking a private call. if you answer a page, you look important.
 
hardy said:
Go to a real underground basement and see if your cell phone still works there, it most likely won't. The paging network is much more reliable as you only need to send a very short message one way so this can be done with a much stronger signal. Also, the paging network runs at a different frequency which has much better penetration in buildings. Short, pager systems are built with reliability in mind, cell phone systems are not.
Click to expand...

This is the main reason IMHO. The interference in hospitals due to the technology being used (by rads, rad onc, etc) ensures that there will will huge areas where you get no cell phone reception. When your patient is crashing and the nursing station tries to reach you, they can't just get voicemail -- you have to be reachable. Pagers work in these situations. Cell phones won't. I also agree with the cheapness comment, and the fact that you need something the med student can grab off your belt and read to you when you have your hands full.
 
Do you have to buy your own? Any recommendations if you do?
 
Because I can answer pages on my terms. Can you imagine the insanity of the floor having a direct line to me? You'd never get anything done.

If a direct line to doctors was available, it would be abused. Pagers get abused too, but the thought of waiting for a callback makes one think for a moment before paging.
 
Yup, same story.
Pagers are much more reliable, and work anywhere, whereas cellphones dont.
Anything that can be text-message'ed can be text-paged, and with a higher change of being recieved on time.
Texts are more convenient than phone calls.
It might just be psychological but its less stressful when an attending hasnt called back on a page, vs. when they are consistently not answering their cellphone.
 
In addition to the above, the pager system is reliable almost 100% of the time. The same cannot be said of cellphones and blackberries. Cellphone services can get overwhelmed when there are too many people making too many calls at the same time. Inside the hospital, pagers are going off constantly. Imagine if everyone uses cellphones and the cellphone service/towers get overwhelmed ... then no one can connect to anyone. This can be dangerous to patients if there is a code, a rapid response, etc.

At my hospital, the dictation system, wireless, and even the electronic medical records/ordering systems are down temporarily on occasions. I have yet to see the paging system EVER go down (if it did, there will be mass celebration from the house staff in all departments :laugh:)
 
thechad said:
Do you have to buy your own? Any recommendations if you do?
Click to expand...
we have to pay for our plan, about $4 a month (God forbid the school include it with the $37,950 in tuition), but everyone gets the same plan.


the other thing is that pagers can receive mass pages. Any time a trauma comes in, the dispatcher types up a quick text, and everybody in the ER gets paged, the trauma surgery team gets paged (this is great for the med student! if you didn't get paged, nobody would ever let you know a trauma was coming), and anybody else that needs to know.
 
Winged Scapula said:
They are provided by the hospital.

Free of charge, unless you drop it into the toilet multiple times...THEN they threaten to charge you for a new one.:D
Click to expand...

Back when I first started at a hospital, I kept my pager on my hip because I didn't know any better. We were moving an ICU bed into a small elevator on one of my first days. I went to squeeze past the edge of the bed to get on said elevator. As I squeezed past, my pager got knocked off my hip. In slow motion, I watched as it followed a perfect arc and fell into the gap between the elevator and the floor. It didn't even bounce. Then, we all heard as it fell all the way down to the basement and smashed on the floor.

Everybody had watched this happen, even the patient, who simply responded, "Does that get added to my bill?"

Apparently they had to send a maintenance guy into the shaft to fish out all of the pieces
 
Steako said:
Back when I first started at a hospital, I kept my pager on my hip because I didn't know any better.
Click to expand...

Where else would you keep it?:confused:

I would wear my on the back of my scrubs when doing trauma, because it was easier to hear and get to underneath all the lead and other gowning required in the Trauma Bay.

However, being female, using the toilet involves dropping trou and invariably, the pager into the toilet. I did it twice in one night, 45 minutes apart. After that they instituted these leashes for the pagers...they would break after about 3 weeks of constant pulling the pager off one's hip.
 
Members don't see this ad :)
Winged Scapula said:
Where else would you keep it?:confused:

I would wear my on the back of my scrubs when doing trauma, because it was easier to hear and get to underneath all the lead and other gowning required in the Trauma Bay.

However, being female, using the toilet involves dropping trou and invariably, the pager into the toilet. I did it twice in one night, 45 minutes apart. After that they instituted these leashes for the pagers...they would break after about 3 weeks of constant pulling the pager off one's hip.
Click to expand...

Well, my thought process was that it would get knocked off by things, so I moved it to a pocket on my scrub top. I could feel it vibrate even if I didn't hear it go off.
 
Steako said:
Well, my thought process was that it would get knocked off by things, so I moved it to a pocket on my scrub top. I could feel it vibrate even if I didn't hear it go off.
Click to expand...

Ahhh...you must be male.

Anything in the top pocket or clipped to the top scrub pocket tends to fall out or reveal too much as the weight of the pager pulls the top down and out when you bend over.
 
Winged Scapula said:
Ahhh...you must be male.

Anything in the top pocket or clipped to the top scrub pocket tends to fall out or reveal too much as the weight of the pager pulls the top down and out when you bend over.
Click to expand...

I've noticed this (wow, that sounds creepy). It made me feel a bit bad for the poor girls. I suppose I could be showing off chest hair, which could freak some people out :D
 
Winged Scapula said:
...
Anything in the top pocket or clipped to the top scrub pocket tends to fall out or reveal too much as the weight of the pager pulls the top down and out when you bend over.
Click to expand...

Doesn't really matter -- scrub tops are plenty revealing when gals bend over whether the pocket is empty or full. And since you have limited pockets, if the pager isn't in the scrub top, something else will be.
 
TheProwler said:
...

the other thing is that pagers can receive mass pages. Any time a trauma comes in, the dispatcher types up a quick text, and everybody in the ER gets paged, the trauma surgery team gets paged (this is great for the med student! if you didn't get paged, nobody would ever let you know a trauma was coming), and anybody else that needs to know.
Click to expand...

The technology actually exists to do this will cell phones as well. At a place I worked for, the computer sent text messages to a number of attendings' cell phones in addition to the team pagers for mass page situations.
 
Hospitals are low tech yo. Mobile phones don't work inside. :laugh:
 
TheProwler said:
And has this ever been validated?


?
Click to expand...

If you mean what I think you mean, what he's saying is the other way around. The bells and whistles around the hospital make cell phone reception worse.

I doubt it makes a difference nowadays but years ago it did. In the ICU i used to work in... years before my time, if a cell phone rang, the monitors really would go haywire. So say the nurses.
 
In my hospital, the area where we now have our resident clinics used to be a radiology area. All of the rooms are still lined with lead, so we don't get any cell phone reception there. I've never been anywhere where a page couldn't go through on the paging system. The other plus, as people have mentioned, is that if you are busy at the moment you get paged, you can return the page in a few minutes.

QUOTE=howelljolly;8271144]If you mean what I think you mean, what he's saying is the other way around. The bells and whistles around the hospital make cell phone reception worse.

I doubt it makes a difference nowadays but years ago it did. In the ICU i used to work in... years before my time, if a cell phone rang, the monitors really would go haywire. So say the nurses.[/QUOTE]
 
So what did they do in the old days? If the surgeon was tending to a patient on the floor, and one of his patients in the ICU starts getting hypotensive, what did they do?
 
TheProwler said:
So what did they do in the old days? If the surgeon was tending to a patient on the floor, and one of his patients in the ICU starts getting hypotensive, what did they do?
Click to expand...

Overhead page.

Also keep in mind that today's floor patient's were yesteryear's ICU patients, and today's ICU patient's were dead.
 
hardy said:
Go to a real underground basement and see if your cell phone still works there, it most likely won't. The paging network is much more reliable as you only need to send a very short message one way so this can be done with a much stronger signal. Also, the paging network runs at a different frequency which has much better penetration in buildings. Short, pager systems are built with reliability in mind, cell phone systems are not.
Click to expand...

In our ER the student's pagers wont get reception at all.

Unlike cell phones where a text will reach you when you go back into a reception area, if you are out of range when the page is sent, you dont get it.

We have a ton of attendings that get their pages on their phones. Just seems easy to me.

SoCuteMD said:
Overhead page.

Also keep in mind that today's floor patient's were yesteryear's ICU patients, and today's ICU patient's were dead.
Click to expand...

I had to chuckle at this.
 
Instatewaiter said:
In our ER the student's pagers wont get reception at all.

Unlike cell phones where a text will reach you when you go back into a reception area, if you are out of range when the page is sent, you dont get it.

We have a ton of attendings that get their pages on their phones. Just seems easy to me.



I had to chuckle at this.
Click to expand...

Apparently some of the Blackberrys can be set up to link to an existing pager service so you get your pages forwarded to the Blackberry. Anyone know about this?

Seems like if you dont have a pager, you can set up your answering service to screen your calls and send the important ones to your cell phone.

What are the alternatives to giving out your cell number nowadays? Seems like there are very few pager carriers.
 
howelljolly said:
...
Seems like if you dont have a pager, you can set up your answering service to screen your calls and send the important ones to your cell phone.
...
Click to expand...

Does you no good if you are in a hospital with very little cell phone reception in huge parts of the building (where you inevitably will be when the important calls come in). It's not like you can go outside to check your messages every few minutes.
 
Law2Doc said:
Does you no good if you are in a hospital with very little cell phone reception in huge parts of the building (where you inevitably will be when the important calls come in). It's not like you can go outside to check your messages every few minutes.
Click to expand...

True, but I mean in general. When I make it to Attendingland, Id like to carry as few electronics as possible, while not having my phone number written on the bathroom stall.
 
group_theory said:
In addition to the above, the pager system is reliable almost 100% of the time. The same cannot be said of cellphones and blackberries. Cellphone services can get overwhelmed when there are too many people making too many calls at the same time. Inside the hospital, pagers are going off constantly. Imagine if everyone uses cellphones and the cellphone service/towers get overwhelmed ... then no one can connect to anyone. This can be dangerous to patients if there is a code, a rapid response, etc.

At my hospital, the dictation system, wireless, and even the electronic medical records/ordering systems are down temporarily on occasions. I have yet to see the paging system EVER go down (if it did, there will be mass celebration from the house staff in all departments :laugh:)
Click to expand...

Ours did when I was on my medicine sub-I in February. Pages were being delayed by about 30min if they went through at all. Quite annoying.

Tangent:
I hope that I don't have to pay for my pager as a resident. I've had to as a med student.
 
Ashers said:
...
I hope that I don't have to pay for my pager as a resident. I've had to as a med student.
Click to expand...

Most residencies give you a pager, and keep a stock of replacement batteries available on request. Med students sometimes have to pay for them because they are regarded as more for the benefit of the student than the program.
 
Some of our services (ex: Trauma) are experimenting with issuing Blackberries to the midlevels, so they can communicate by texting. Thus far it has worked out well, no reception problems in the ICUs or ED, but I don't know what kind of facility issues were addressed prior to rolling that out.

We have alpha pagers and get our clerkship lectures canceled or rearranged by mass text with annoying regularity. I much prefer sending a text to my resident, when possible. I concisely send the info and my plan, with an extension to call me back if she wants to alter my plan. Most of the time we can skip the call and expedite the work.

The Attendings don't typically have alpha pagers here. Technology trickles upward slowly.
 
Maybe an additional person can comment on this, but as the lowly OMS-0 that I am, I had to carry one of the Nokia brick phone's around HUP while volunteering/transporting patients. I never had faulty service or experienced a dead zone and the phone communicated with central command by text. Granted, I didn't stroll into many different areas, but the phone worked from the 14th floor to the basement. Maybe the hospital has internal service towers?
 
Some combination of the "call back on my own terms" theory and the fact that IT adoption is painfully slow in hospitals. Heck, the computer systems around here must be from the late 80s/early 90.
 
TheProwler said:
And has this ever been validated?


How do you know this?
Click to expand...
on mythbusters they did one with cellphones on planes. apparently they dont cause interference... but once in a while, it might. and that would be bad.
plus im sure purchasing blackberries and switching over etc etc is too much of a hassle and too much money so why not keep it?
 
Bacchus said:
Maybe an additional person can comment on this, but as the lowly OMS-0 that I am, I had to carry one of the Nokia brick phone's around HUP while volunteering/transporting patients. I never had faulty service or experienced a dead zone and the phone communicated with central command by text. Granted, I didn't stroll into many different areas, but the phone worked from the 14th floor to the basement. Maybe the hospital has internal service towers?
Click to expand...

Probably on the same service with a tower right on top/near the hospital. Some hospitals do provide phones for some staff. It's not economically feasible to do so for everyone who carries a pager, though. They'd either have to require all of the (underpaid) housestaff to buy the same cell service, which would likely cause an uproar. Alternately, they could provide service for all of staff with a phone from the same service, but that drastically increases a) service costs b) equipment costs when phones get broken. It also may mean that people end up carrying MORE crap around - both their personal cell phone and a work cell phone. It's one thing to give the transporters a few phone which are traded off at the end of shifts. Each resident would likely have to have a phone, which gets a lot more expensive.
 
Bacchus said:
Maybe an additional person can comment on this, but as the lowly OMS-0 that I am, I had to carry one of the Nokia brick phone's around HUP while volunteering/transporting patients. I never had faulty service or experienced a dead zone and the phone communicated with central command by text. Granted, I didn't stroll into many different areas, but the phone worked from the 14th floor to the basement. Maybe the hospital has internal service towers?
Click to expand...

Our hospital installed Verizon repeaters throughout the hospital last summer. full service throughout if you have verizon, but At&t still has poor reception like you would expect
 
USCguy said:
Our hospital installed Verizon repeaters throughout the hospital last summer. full service throughout if you have verizon, but At&t still has poor reception like you would expect
Click to expand...

Yeah, that was quite annoying for the first half of last year. Nice of them to fix it for us.
 
group_theory said:
At my hospital, the dictation system, wireless, and even the electronic medical records/ordering systems are down temporarily on occasions. I have yet to see the paging system EVER go down (if it did, there will be mass celebration from the house staff in all departments :laugh:)
Click to expand...

My hospital had an intermittent pager issue, the pager people thought we were crazy for complaining but after a month of intermittent missed pages, they finally replaced the transmitter or some component and magically the problems went away.
 
howelljolly said:
True, but I mean in general. When I make it to Attendingland, Id like to carry as few electronics as possible, while not having my phone number written on the bathroom stall.
Click to expand...

Attendings' cell phones ALWAYS get reception. It's uncanny. Even when no one on the team can get a signal, the attending's phone is always ringing. Especially when you're post-call rounding on your last patient at 1PM and he steps into the hall to take it for about 30 minutes.
 
SoCuteMD said:
It's one thing to give the transporters a few phone which are traded off at the end of shifts. Each resident would likely have to have a phone, which gets a lot more expensive.
Click to expand...

I've been in hospitals that did have the VOIP portable phones in the hospital. i actually much prefer these for in-house communications.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Next unread thread

Similar threads

M
21 year old female with borderline polycythemia & elevated iron - next step?
Replies
21
Views
4K
tantacles
tantacles
M
Abdominal pain in a 20 year old female, what could this case be?
Replies
17
Views
4K
Seb345
S
WildWing
Worsening Abdominal Pain and Bloating in a 30-Year-Old Woman
Replies
1
Views
1K
Bobbbyyyy
Bobbbyyyy
P
Doctor's note question, Is this valid?
Replies
3
Views
1K
deleted480308
D
C
Worsening dizziness in 40 year old man - Possible heart failure case?
Replies
0
Views
721
caters
C
Top