In this post on the
Huffington Post yesterday, Sachin Jain, a physician and presumably a technophile, bemoans the enduring use of pagers among physicians, labeling pager carriers as outdated and failing to leverage available technology to make communication more efficient. As a devoted pager carrier, I will enumerate the many reasons why the pager is a preferred communication modality for many physicians, and the ways in which Dr. Jain is missing the point.
- Patient Safety. I work in the ICU. If there is something that the RN needs to inform me, s/he needs to know that I have received the message. If said RN (or intern or resident or other physician) pages me and I respond, they know I know. If instead they send a text message or leave a voice mail, they do not know that I received the message. They assume I did, and move on to other tasks. If I did not receive the message, time sensitive things can get missed or delayed and that's a big safety issue.
