Where do you guys get your pagers/plans for third year?

[Bjams]

I need to get a pager for my internal med rotation in July. Can any of you share where you bought your pager and got set up with a plan? Also, can I get a simple numeric pager which only shows what number to call back, or should I be getting an alpha-numeric pager that can show text messages?

My school hasn't been helpful for me on this, so your thoughts will be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

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[SouthernSurgeon]

I need to get a pager for my internal med rotation in July. Can any of you share where you bought your pager and got set up with a plan? Also, can I get a simple numeric pager which only shows what number to call back, or should I be getting an alpha-numeric pager that can show text messages?

My school hasn't been helpful for me on this, so your thoughts will be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Ours are all distributed through our hospital/med school...at the beginning of third year we all fill out a form, pay them money for a year's worth of service, then go to the office and pick up a pager. Sorry, I realize that's not helpful...

What have other students done in the past? Surely you can ask a rising 4th year...

 

[alwaysaangel]

I need to get a pager for my internal med rotation in July. Can any of you share where you bought your pager and got set up with a plan? Also, can I get a simple numeric pager which only shows what number to call back, or should I be getting an alpha-numeric pager that can show text messages?

My school hasn't been helpful for me on this, so your thoughts will be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Yeah check with your school, it seems like it would be very unreliable to have all the students on different services with completely different numbers.

At our school we're all on the same system so you just need to know the last 4 digits because everyone has the same first 4 digits. I'd be surprised if your school just had a million different numbers for everyone and no consistent service.

 

[Mayhem]

If your school requires it then they have to have some sort of system. Have you spoken to any upper years? I can't see them telling you to just do it yourself.

 

[fuzzywuz]

The students are responsible for the service cost?!

 

[G-Man82]

I only got pagers on 2 services: Medicine and Surgery. On the others, and even those 2, most of the time you just use your cell phone and text message. I got them from the department at the orientation preceding each rotation. Besides, I hated the pagers and am not looking forward to it when I start residency in a year.

 

[WellWornLad]

Besides, I hated the pagers and am not looking forward to it when I start residency in a year.

How can you hate pagers? They're so retro.

 

[Tiger26]

Our school made us buy them all from the same company--you know, cause i have nothing better to spend $80/year on than a device from the early 90's that we use to coordinate our lunch schedules among the other med students and play jokes on each other . . .

 

[Doctor Bagel]

Our school provided us all with pagers for free (and no service charge, but I'm sure it's built in to something) at the start of the year. You'd think they'd want you all to have the same system because it makes things like text paging so much easier.

 

[scube]

we beg MS4 to sell them to us. this year over half the class got the discounted pagers. then we set up a day for the service company to come and provide those who didn't get pagers. even with a 25 dollar used pager we are in for about 150 or so. Its my understanding we get paged about 10 times in the year. for the 15 bucks a page, I would prefer they pay somebody to actually run around the hospital and fine city i live in and hand deliver the pages to the students.

 

[Mayhem]

we beg MS4 to sell them to us. this year over half the class got the discounted pagers. then we set up a day for the service company to come and provide those who didn't get pagers. even with a 25 dollar used pager we are in for about 150 or so. Its my understanding we get paged about 10 times in the year. for the 15 bucks a page, I would prefer they pay somebody to actually run around the hospital and fine city i live in and hand deliver the pages to the students.

At that price wouldn't it be easier to just ask people to text you then pay them back? I mean, you probably have a cell already and how expensive is 10 texts?

 

[ACGator09]

we beg MS4 to sell them to us. this year over half the class got the discounted pagers. then we set up a day for the service company to come and provide those who didn't get pagers. even with a 25 dollar used pager we are in for about 150 or so. Its my understanding we get paged about 10 times in the year. for the 15 bucks a page, I would prefer they pay somebody to actually run around the hospital and fine city i live in and hand deliver the pages to the students.

wooooow that blows. i hope i dont go to your school