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Discussion

Remember pagers?

  • Experts

One of my favorite things to do with my incredibly outstanding medical nurse wife Belinda is to watch a medical show, pause the DVD, and discuss what's taking place or recall a situation.

Last night Belinda and I were watching the first season of ER when a doctor's pager went off. I paused the DVD.

The summer of 1987, I was working as a scrub nurse at Weed Rover Township Hospital, was on call, and shopping at the Weed Rover Wal Mart when my pager went off. I immediately rushed to the payphones at the front of the store, put in my quarter, called the hospital, and hoped a bystander could hear me say, "An emergency C-section? And you need me right away? I'm just down the street at Wal Mart! I'll be there in five minutes!"

Yeah. Glory Days and pagers.

Got any?

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    • Featured Replies

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    • Experts
    5318008

    [ATTACH=CONFIG]28032[/ATTACH]

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    • Admin

    Whaddaya mean remember? I still have one! So do all the anesthesia providers, surgeons, and some OR staff here.

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    • Admin
    5318008

    867-5309 is another good one. It actually connects to a college student's dorm room here í ½í¸‚í ½í¸‚í ½í¸‚

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    • Experts

    I still have one -- though I can receive texts on it now.

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    • Author
    • Experts
    Whaddaya mean remember? I still have one! So do all the anesthesia providers, surgeons, and some OR staff here.

    attachment.php?attachmentid=28034&stc=1

    My beaver's going off, my computer and I are both slow on the uptake, and I thought cell phones had replaced pagers!

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    • Author
    • Experts
    867-5309 is another good one. It actually connects to a college student's dorm room here.

    [ATTACH=CONFIG]28035[/ATTACH]

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    Um....we still use pagers in my hospital. On my floor we carry them every shift. No voicesaras (sp?)for us on the med floors. I've been at my hospital 18 years, we've always had the them.

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    The most important page of my shift was...

    "Anyone want to order chinese?"

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    UGH, pagers!! We've used them in every hospital where I've worked to let us know when there's a) a delivery b) a post-op, or c) a rapid response/code.

    As a millennial who had never used one until I entered healthcare, I've never quite been able to get the hang of them. Once I navigate away from the message, I can never get back (even if I navigated away by accident without actually reading the message). Lord knows I have no idea how to send a message on one (although I think you type it on the computer now?) It reminds me of that old-school texting where you had to hit the key a certain number of times to get the right letter to appear.

    How is it that my hospital is on the 'cutting edge' or surgeries, but we're still using communication technology that was 'cutting edge' in the 80s? When I can literally access the internet from my cell phone? Baffling.

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    I had a personal pager (back in the day) when they first came out, mainly for my kids so it didn't make me feel important, just usually annoyed (you are paging me to ask THAT!) becuase then I would have to go and find a pay phone and sometimes go get change also (ugh).

    The last hospital I worked at still had pagers for Charge RN's, not really sure why we needed them when we also had a work phone but what do I know!

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