What do medical students get paged for, if even paged at all?

[HappiSquirrel]

Just got my rotation pager today. I'm curious, what do medical students get paged for? I hardly doubt anyone will ever need my opinion as a M3 so why would I even get paged? What do you guys get paged for? Personal stories (funny or serious) welcomed.

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[AxiomaticTruth]

Paged my friends for ****s and giggles. But otherwise, even I as a medical student would bypass other medical student pages and just page the intern/resident.

 

[JustPlainBill]

In case the team has a rectal exam that needs to be done...only 2 reasons not to do a rectal -- patient doesn't have a rectum or you don't have a med student.....you think I'm joking.....

 

[JP2740]

In case the team has a rectal exam that needs to be done...only 2 reasons not to do a rectal -- patient doesn't have a rectum or you don't have a med student.....you think I'm joking.....

What about neutropenia

 

[JustPlainBill]

What about neutropenia

What about it? Most likely they wouldn't have the authority to issue orders or do anything if they knew what to do, so I would assume most likely won't get paged. We had pagers but the only time mine went off was when my gen surg attending, who had taken off for a half day and let me go, got paged in on a hot case.....

 

[ndafife]

For my school, in theory it was so the residents/intern/attending could contact us about where to meet/things to do/etc... in practice they figured out texting works better

 

[sliceofbread136]

What about it? Most likely they wouldn't have the authority to issue orders or do anything if they knew what to do, so I would assume most likely won't get paged. We had pagers but the only time mine went off was when my gen surg attending, who had taken off for a half day and let me go, got paged in on a hot case.....

I think he is pointing out a third reason not to do a rectal. I’ll add possible imperforate anus to the list

 

[CherryRedDracul]

Things I've gotten paged for:

• Nothing

Texting worked much better. And if there was something important to page about, who cares about the med student; the resident is getting the first page. Just being honest here.

 

[ortnakas]

I’ve had a pager on three rotations.
1) not sure why I had it, it never went off and has never gone off for any student ever
2) not sure why I had it, they always needed the resident anyway
3) carried the team admissions pager on occasion as a subI, which actually made some sense

 

[mehc012]

Things I've gotten paged for:

• Time change for the start of the day
• Location to meet for the start of the day
• Time change for a surgery/case
• If I was out and about on the floors doing a consult or something, the resident/attending would page where to meet up with them after or to add another consult to my to-do list

Sometimes we text instead but this some docs prefer not to share personal cell numbers (and frankly I'd rather not either unless it's somebody I want to stay in touch with for a letter or something). Or it's the first day with a new resident/attending and you haven't had a chance to exchange numbers yet. Most of the time it's just a lump in my pocket but the few times I've needed it it's been pretty handy.

Google Voice number that forwards to your phone, but can be turned off when you're not on shift.