Pagers? Cell phones??

[JKP]

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Do people still use pagers these days? I was trying to buy a pager and no one seems to carry them anymore. Do people use cell phones on the wards now? I thought they were not allowed on the wards...

 

[Jaded Soul]

Pagers are still the most reliable method of communication on the wards. Cell phones can interfer with monitoring equipment and should not be used. Signal strength varies depending on carrier, phone model, and where you physically are in a building.

Ask people in the class above you. They'll have the best info for local pager deals.

 

[kedhegard]

Maybe a little nerdy, but I bought this...http://www.officedepot.com/ddSKU.do?level=SK&id=253946

You get a free year of service, with text, numerical, email, and stock/sports updates. After the year, it's like 6 bucks a month. You can type in code 32451881 when you check out to get another 20 dollars off the watch. If that doesn't work, just search google for "office depot codes", and it will give you a bunch of different coupon codes that you can type in. They actually work. So I got my pager watch with a year's free service for under sixty dollars, no activation fee.

 

[mdblue]

Do people still use pagers these days? I was trying to buy a pager and no one seems to carry them anymore. Do people use cell phones on the wards now? I thought they were not allowed on the wards...

Don't buy-the hospital will give one for free when you move to your clinical years. Save the $ for something else. 🙂

 

[JKP]

Thanks Jaded Soul, mdblue, for your advice.
Kedhegard, I checked it out on office depot and its a pretty cool watch! (I'm definitely a nerd.) 😴

 

[debvz]

Don't buy-the hospital will give one for free when you move to your clinical years. Save the $ for something else. 🙂

Had to buy (actually a yr-long rental) our own pagers in 3rd yr. Hosp did not supply them, unless you were on the Surgery/Trauma and were stuck with the Code pager (and believe me, that's not one you want to get stuck with permanently). But we had a local messaging service come to the school at the start of 3rd yr and students could purchase a variety of pagers from them.

 

[Mirror Form]

Had to buy (actually a yr-long rental) our own pagers in 3rd yr. Hosp did not supply them, unless you were on the Surgery/Trauma and were stuck with the Code pager (and believe me, that's not one you want to get stuck with permanently).

Same here, and you don't want to be caught w/o a pager b/c then you're stuck on the resident.

 

[JKP]

I'm not thrilled about giving out my cell phone number... I had some experience with an attending who kept calling me regarding a research project and he couldn't reach me when I was in the elevators. I would get a voicemail like three hours later... 😕

 

[Jaded Soul]

Don't buy-the hospital will give one for free when you move to your clinical years. Save the $ for something else. 🙂

Not at my hospital.

 

[Winged Scapula]

It is handy when our medical students have pagers but like other hospitals we either don't provide them or only do for students on surgical/trauma rotations. If you don't get one, something else is helpful and make sure the operator has your pager number - for some reason, i'm always losing the slip of paper I write the student's number on!

 

[Yosh]

I loved having a pager 3rd year...as it let you do what you needed to do, with the ability to be reached by your intern, resident, attending so forth....
I am a 4th year now..and the hospital I am at doesn't have pagers for visiting students...and I feel tied down...

I miss my pager...

 

[Vincristine]

Yeesh, Tuesday I leave for 9 weeks of aways and I guess I just assumed all hospitals gave students pagers as my home hospital does (we actually got ours 2nd year). I can't imagine rotating without a pager, but my home pager isn't going to work in Boston. Crap, guess I better find out ASAP and get one when I get to Boston otherwise.

 

[boston]

I loved having a pager 3rd year...as it let you do what you needed to do, with the ability to be reached by your intern, resident, attending so forth....
I am a 4th year now..and the hospital I am at doesn't have pagers for visiting students...and I feel tied down...

I miss my pager...

Within the first few months of intern year, you will hate your pager.
Everytime mine goes off, I have a physiologic reaction to it - like having
a little electric shock.

 

[Whisker Barrel Cortex]

Yeah, I'm actually surprised I never broke my pager out of frustration as an intern. I counted pages one night, just to get an idea. From 5pm to 9pm, I averaged a page EVERY 6 minutes! Try doing an H&P on someone in the ED while your pager goes off non-stop (of course you have to answer it quickly, or else they will repage. Plus, what if it truly is an emergency, which it is about 5% of the time). It usually died down to every 20 minutes to 1 hour after about 2am.

Radiology call can be just as bad. Our long call residents (which I haven't done yet) get paged several times by the time they can look through an entire abdominal CT. Really breaks the concentration and makes things take longer.

Ahh, I miss the days when the pager was something I liked having.

 

[Samoa]

Everytime mine goes off, I have a physiologic reaction to it - like having
a little electric shock.

I know what you mean. At my second-to-last job before med school, I was supervising this group of people on the night shift who simply COULD NOT get along. They would constantly page me, regardless of the time, to settle their latest petty argument over God-knows-what. My own boss wanted me there during the day to participate in group decision-making, and I also supervised people on the evening shift. So I was on call pretty much 24/7, for about three months straight....good times...

I also had set my pager to one of the more distinctive alarms, and even now, anytime I hear someone's pager go off with that particular alarm, I get an adrenaline rush. And not the good kind. 😱

 

[JKP]

Which vendors would be recommended? On yahoo, I found directpage, metrotel, beepers.com... Are they all pretty much the same in terms of reliability?

Also, do people find voicemail or alpha-numeric text useful? 😎

 

[Samoa]

Alpha-numeric is only helpful if the hospital's computer system allows the staff to send alpha-numeric pages to you, otherwise it's useless. But if they can, it definitely reduces the number of calls you have to return for stupid little things.

 

[Sheon]

Okay the old skool Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble cell phones, the ones with the giant headsets that people used to be scared would cause brain cancer, THOSE interfere with monitoring equipment. Those are true cell phones and I challenge any one of you to find one.

The modern, flip phones with the cameras and games and electronic memory (etc.). Those are wireless phones. They are totally digital and they are incapable of interfering with medical equipment. The signals aren't that strong.

 

[njbmd]

Okay the old skool Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble cell phones, the ones with the giant headsets that people used to be scared would cause brain cancer, THOSE interfere with monitoring equipment. Those are true cell phones and I challenge any one of you to find one.

The modern, flip phones with the cameras and games and electronic memory (etc.). Those are wireless phones. They are totally digital and they are incapable of interfering with medical equipment. The signals aren't that strong.

Hi there,
Though the new digital phones and signalling devices such as Palm Pilots do not interfere with hospital monitoring devices, some hospitals still have posted regulations prohibiting those devices. Unless you are going to get the regs in your hospitals changed, you are bound to abide by them or risk having them confiscated by some hospital security dude.

Some hospitals such as UVA have gone to cellular phone systems for some residents such as ER and Trauma service. These devices do not interfere with monitoring but do not work in the shielded areas such as radiology. We still had to carry our pagers but the phones come in handy when you want the radiologist to phone back results of CT Scans etc.

For third year, a personal pager is still a good option. Just make sure that it has vibrate mode available.

Cheers!
njbmd

 

[roja]

I wouldn't buy a very expensive pager. You just need a basic one so that your team can page you when there is stuff going on, or ifyour resident/intern needs you when you are on call.

Don't get a lot of bells and whistles unless you just like those things.

When you start RESIDENCY, your hospital will give you one. And it won't be fancy. but it will be tied into the hospital's pager system. so your personal pager will be extra.

Cell phones are looked down upon on the floors.... you don't want them ringing during rounds!

 

[Asher]

The benefit of a cell phone lies not so much when you are on the wards but when you are in transit (getting to, leaving the hospital, in between buildings) and get a page and there is no regular phone in site.

The best advice about what type of pager to get would be from last year's M3s. Often schools will have a deal with a local provider for cheaper service and pager purchase. I got the basic pager and plan for about $7 a month. A few people splurged on a text pager but they never needed that function while in the hospital.

 

[gwyn779]

The best advice about what type of pager to get would be from last year's M3s. Often schools will have a deal with a local provider for cheaper service and pager purchase. I got the basic pager and plan for about $7 a month. A few people splurged on a text pager but they never needed that function while in the hospital.

We weren't given pagers but were required to buy them. However, they had a special deal worked out with one of the local companies, I think it was $90 for the pager and a year of service. Better than any deal you'd find on your own. But our class was given all this information in plenty of time to get it for 3rd year.

And it is only analog phones that interfere w/ equipment, but it's much more difficult to enforce "no analog phones" as opposed to "no phones at all."

 

[madcadaver]

The modern, flip phones with the cameras and games and electronic memory (etc.). Those are wireless phones. They are totally digital and they are incapable of interfering with medical equipment. The signals aren't that strong.

Not true; I have done a lot of reading on this topic. Wireless (including digital) phones have been shown to affect monitoring equipment and other electronic devices, though only in close proximity-- within a meter. You can find plenty of citations in PubMed on this topic. Below is one abstract.

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Mobile phones in the hospital--past, present and future.

Klein AA, Djaiani GN.

Cardiovascular Anaesthesia and Intensive Care Medicine, Toronto General Hospital, University Health Network, 200 Elizabeth Street, Toronto, Ontario M5G 2C4, Canada. [email protected]

The phenomenon of electromagnetic interference by mobile phones is real and potentially clinically significant. This has been recognised by the Department of Health and the Medical Devices Agency, leading to bans on phone use in hospitals. Current evidence suggests that mobile phones can cause malfunction of medical equipment, but only when used in close proximity. Allowing phone use in non-patient care areas and improving staff education may improve compliance with hospital policies.

 

[Blade28]

Our school provided us with pagers for the clinical years. It's just a basic one...and you'll get a new one during residency.