My first day at work, the rather grumpy clerk ("No! I'm not a clerk! I'm an admin executive!") passed me my pager. I last used a pager when I was an army boy. At that time, handphones were as big as water bottles and were often the favourite murder weapons in Chinese drama serials.
I did not know what to expect with the ancient gadget in my hand. Like a hooker, I waited for my "customers" to page for me. It did not take long. Before the day ended, I had 40 odd pages. That made it an average of 4.4444444 pages per hour. Die die die die die die, it cried out at me.
The usual culprits are the nurses who can page you incessantly for the most ridiculous of things. You would think they would at least wait by the phone for you to answer. But there exist a particular university hospital where the culture of the nurses are such that they will page you and just leave.
Doc: Hello, docto- on-call here, who paged?
Nurse(on the other end of the line) shouts: ANYBODY PAGE????!!!!
Nurse: You wait ar!
And so you wait, and wait, and wait. All this while, your pager goes off a couple more times and your patients are waiting for you to digitally evac their impacted faeces!
Hello! If you want to page people, at least wait by the phone for 5 minutes, can????
Many doctors have this same experience. You are on call, it is the wee hours of the morning, you are cold, tired, hungry and sticky. The pager keeps beeping...... You ask yourself what the f**k you are doing here, you just wanna throw the god damn thing out of the window, walk out of the hospital and take a taxi back home where your comfy bed is. Don't worry, we all have the same experience. One foreign talent did just that, she walked out of the hospital on the first call and took the next flight home. But at least she left her pager behind. Beep!
All said and done, a junior doctor is expected to have good pager habits. That is to answer all pages and to answer them ASAP. The pager is like an invisible leash on the doctors. It is a curse. It is a curse that we carry.
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poor you.
ReplyDeleteand is there no one you can feedback to? man this can be a real bugger.
One hospital is switching to handphones but in certain areas, hp are still officially not allowed becoz it is not clear if they can interfere with medical equipments. there was an incident where pt's relative complained becoz they were not allowed to use hp in these areas and they saw doctors doing so. the hp price plan they offer is also quite lousy so in the end you gotta carry two hp. one for hospital, one for private use.....
ReplyDeleteas for zhe bin, feeding back is like throwing an egg on the wall. splat! anyway, you only find this type of culture in ONE particular hospital. Most other nurses will wait by the phone, after all if they page you, they must have something to tell you.
i rue the day they really convert to mobile phone. with the pager, you have the option of a delayed reply or even ignoring it if you're senior enough but with the mobile phone, there's no running away. important rule of preserving privacy: never use your private cellular for work.
ReplyDeleteno escaping from hp since the major telcos will be phasing out pagers. My main problem with hp is that u can't just change batteries on the go. So you gotta prepare an additional standby or make sure you charge your phone everynight.
ReplyDeleteNurses are busy people who do the shit Tat Drs dun have to do.
ReplyDeleteAND its even fustratin when they dun get the respect they need for motivation from Drs and patients..
haha and hello!sum Drs dun even reply the call no matter how many times the nurse pg 'em...
the Dr just need to make his rounds and leaves his butt.
its the Nurses tat sticks with those patients 24/7.
and if The university hospitals's nurses' services are'nt as good as the general hospitals..it may be cuz they r over-worked(lack of staff) and yet underpaid...
*no offense.but this wat i see in the wards lar.*
have u got the most annoying situation that when u return a page, there is no answer, and you keep calling and callling back the same number and still no answer, and suddenly, the line is engaged! and guess what? while u are still punching the phone trying to get thru the engaged line, u got a repeat page from the same number which u have been trying to get thru for the past 5 min.wat is the use of paging 10X if u dun want to pick up the phone or if u choose to keep the line engaged with repeated paging? maybe tutorials shld be given abt the protocol of paging docs...
ReplyDeletedear annonymous 2 post from the last, your point don't stand because university nurses don't get more pay than their general hospital counterparts nor are they busier.
ReplyDeletetime to invent an exclusive sms pager for doctors to carry around.
ReplyDeletethe imp: pagers in some hospitals accept msg page actually, eg NUH. This should be encouraged.
ReplyDeletethink the culture of waiting is everywhere, but much appreciated if the one who paged can wait by the phone for around 30 seconds lah. maybe the hospital should invest in more portable cordless phones..
wah 30 secs..... sometimes can't find phone in 30s, sometimes someone using the phone (esp canteen), sometimes page reach us late....
ReplyDeleteerrmm.. ok let's not bring in the time factor... those who paged should at least make an effort to SHOW that they are waiting by the phone for a while, and not like what most people do: walk off to dunno where.
ReplyDeletehate it when i see them just page and then tell shout to air "I page Dr, call me if he calls!"
ReplyDeleteThen everyone disappears the doctor calls, someone shouts again, no one answers.
The nurse comes back "Si doctor page him never answer....." and writes in her report "paged Dr so and so x 5, no reply"