Pagers replaced by cell phones, not in US, but in Chinese hospital

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Not that having 3 cell phones to manage for calls concerning patient is physician's dream, it is marginally better than managing 3 pagers. When Dr. Meng took over call duty as Chief for the entire 3rd floor of the main hospital building today, she quickly accrued extra patients and cell phones to manage them.

One phone is personal(ish) as far as some residents and staff have that number to call or text her directly when needed. The second phone is her regular work phone to use for the respiratory unit on a daily basis. The third phone is for the Chief of the floor at the time, which was her turn this afternoon. Similar to an Attending taking over call or a resident taking over other services on weekends, Dr. Meng became the Attending for all 80 or so patients on the respiratory floor. Luckily, most were well tucked away except the unpredicted ICU transfer, a few patients clamoring for admission and others for discharge and scheduled imaging results trickling in throughout the afternoon.

Surprisingly, most US hospitals still use pagers as the primary communication medium between doctors and staff to manage patients. This has been largely supplemented by a hybridized system of cell phones and pagers, as some doctors forward pages to their phones or simply text-page or respond to pages from cell phones. What struck me most is that cell phones have replaced pagers at all in this respiratory department at this Chinese hospital.

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