How soon do you delete your text pages

[VitaminJack]

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When can you delete them or do you same them for an extended period of time for certain reasons? I'm referring to text pages from nurses and other staff?

 

[typhoonegator]

I never delete them, they just overwrite after 20 or so. That way you have a treadmill of recent pages at your fingertips.

I know some people selectively delete some of them and keep others, but that just seems like too much work to me.

At least for my hospital, they're all stored in the on-line paging system anyway, so even if you delete them, you can go back and look at the paging history.

 

[Ashers]

At the end of the night when I'm signing out to the incoming team, if I wasn't bombarded with pages so my pager is full.

Or, if my pager is full, once I'm sure the issue I was paged about is taken care of.

 

[asmallchild]

instantly. i've been burned a couple of times but i like to write it down on a to do sheet and keep my pager clear

 

[jonb12997]

when I'm on call, I delete the page after i've taken care the issue and assuming it's something big enough to pass on to the day team, once i've written it down on my sign out sheet... it's sorta like my to do list that I keep with me (assuming the nurse is nice and actually types more than a number)

 

[SoCuteMD]

I clear my pager of text and number pages as soon as it's full. It allows me to keep approximate track of the number of pages I've received. The fact that duplicate pages don't add another page throws that off a bit - if the same nurse has paged me 5x it only shows up as one page.

 

[SocialistMD]

I delete the page after i've taken care the issue

Same here.

I clear my pager of text and number pages as soon as it's full. It allows me to keep approximate track of the number of pages I've received. The fact that duplicate pages don't add another page throws that off a bit - if the same nurse has paged me 5x it only shows up as one page.

I picked yours because it was the most recent of several, but what is the point of keeping them? Why do you need to keep track of the number of pages you've received?

 

[SoCuteMD]

Same here.


I picked yours because it was the most recent of several, but what is the point of keeping them? Why do you need to keep track of the number of pages you've received?

Well, one of my friends jokingly told the chiefs that we should get $0.10 for every page we receive on our black weekend so that the worse your weekend is, the better your breakfast on Sunday AM is. The chiefs are discussing it (seriously).

If I look back at the night and think "Man, that was brutal!" it can sometimes help me figure out what was brutal - cross-coverage, a really sick patient, or that my admissions came late, etc.

I also don't like to have duplicate pages on my pager because of the way it records them - if it's a duplicate it doesn't record a proper timestamp, but I know I won't delete ALL pages immediately because it's too many buttons to push once I've returned the page, as I've long since returned my pager to my waistband (it's a text pager - can't manipulate it without pulling it out of the holder every time). I got reamed out by a fellow intern for not going to see a cross-coverage patient about whom I was called (I did remember getting the call, but couldn't remember what time it was - it was that kind of night). The same nurse had called me 5x overnight (ugh!) so if I hadn't been deleting pages when my pager was full, I wouldn't have been able to look at it and realize that the page came at 6:15, when I was prerounding on my and my co-intern's patients (her day off) and when I knew the primary team would be coming to get signout any second.

 

[JackADeli]

I generally delete the pages I have addressed.... Some I keep just cause I want the phone number for later usage.

Most hospitals I have worked at have some sort of database of pages. This has made it very easy for me to pull up a record and confirm if a page was even sent. During GSurgery residency, a nurse once complained I "never responded to pages". I met the PD with a printout from the hospital operator/communications center and some progress note copies from patient charts that had time and date of when I cam to patient bedside relative to the pages.... They matched up nicely. The nurse matched up nicely with another job outside of our division It led to some policy changes on nursing paging too. Nurses were now required to text page with the nurse station computer, provide their name, call back number, and some hint as to purpose of page.... It resulted in a marked drop in vindictive paging.👍

On another side, a resident sent a "dirty joke" page. It was declared sexual harassment/abussive conduct to a junior resident and as it had her name on it... well, she also matched up nicely with another career. Stupidity in texting & email has been in existance long before the "Cheetah" formerly known as "Tiger"...

 

[SoCuteMD]

I generally delete the pages I have addressed.... Some I keep just cause I want the phone number for later usage.

Most hospitals I have worked at have some sort of database of pages. This has made it very easy for me to pull up a record and confirm if a page was even sent. During GSurgery residency, a nurse once complained I "never responded to pages". I met the PD with a printout from the hospital operator/communications center and some progress note copies from patient charts that had time and date of when I cam to patient bedside relative to the pages.... They matched up nicely. The nurse matched up nicely with another job outside of our division It led to some policy changes on nursing paging too. Nurses were now required to text page with the nurse station computer, provide their name, call back number, and some hint as to purpose of page.... It resulted in a mraked drop in vindictive paging.

I wish my hospital had a record. We have a good page-forwarding system which does a good job of making sure that people aren't getting paged on their day off - but ONLY if people remember to forward their pagers at the end of the day. A few times people have neglected to forward a pager to me and it resulted in the nurse telling me that I had been ignoring her pages all night when, in fact, they'd been going to a pager sitting in someone's car or whatever. A couple times the nurses have paged my senior after supposedly paging me and not getting a response. It helped that I was sitting NEXT to my senior a couple times when this happened. It also helps that I am OCD about returning pages, will call back if the number I'm paged to is busy, and the only thing I will ignore a page for more than a minute or two for is signout.

 

[taurus70]

I'm on night float this month so I have to delete them daily due to the sheer number. Its keeps my pager organized.