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!"
Specializes in Adult and pediatric emergency and critical care.
Even though we have hospital issues smart phones we still have a hospital ED charge pagers (as well as charge for many other units), and most of our call services still have pagers. My former level I trauma center still has pagers for every person on the trauma service from EMT to attending trauma surgeon. Back when I was in the fire service we were issued pagers in addition to our radios and other dispatching systems.
Pagers operate on a different frequency than radios, cell phones, and wifi. We carried them for times that other means couldn't reliably relay information to use to due to geographical or architectural conditions.
I kind of miss having the trauma pager go off during a presentation or some random meeting, but apparently that's becoming a thing of the past anyway.
3ringnursing, BSN
543 Posts
8675309 ... Jenny