Page 80 - Virtual Vascular Vol 21

MEDICAL PAGER

Until recently, from the day you become a house officer to the day you retire or die, this medical
pager will stay with you day and night. Initially, you receive it with excitement and anticipation,
perhaps as a status symbol even that you have finally graduated as a doctor. This euphoria evap-
orate within days, if not hours, as the constant beeping noises (often sudden and inconvenient)
remind you of lifelong professional duties ranging from numerous medical chores, often trivial,
to major decision-making on patients’ lives. More and more, they are replaced by official mobile
phones administered by various health institutions.
Medical pagers do have their advantages. They are low maintenance devices with great battery
lives (can last up to a week). They work when cellular networks or WIFI are down or poor, and
function in dead-zones in the hospital (e.g. in lifts).

In major emergencies (such as disaster calls, trauma calls or cardiac arrest calls), the signal can
be sent to the entire team of medical staff simultaneously. Beepers are also simple one-way sys-
tems that do not allow any violation of security breaches.

September 17, 2022 is the last day that medical pagers are in use in Mary Hospital. Doctors
now carry hospital-administered mobile phones for communication. Whilst pagers have sur-
vived the test of time for decades, they eventually surrender to digital technology.

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