Why Do Doctors Still Use Pagers ?
Like lab coats, stethoscopes, and trademarked hospital scrubs, another common telltale sign of a health professional is the infernal beeping of a 1990s pager. But why do doctors and medical professionals still use pagers?
Despite being a profession arguably often on the forefront of technology in the 21st century, medicine still relies on the pager of all things to facilitate emergency communication and help easily and quickly transmit critical information to doctors and nurses about when and where they should be, and for what.
Yes, pagers are still a thing in American hospitals, and they aren’t alone. An estimated 80 percent of US hospitals use pager networks, and this is reflected in other developed countries, including the UK, where hospitals use roughly an estimated 10% of the world’s total number of pagers (about 130,000 devices).
Despite several calls towards modernization and a push for digitalization, many argue that there are plenty of good reasons the pager continues to be a staple among health professionals above a simple secure messaging app, like Signal.
Pagers Use Longer Radio Waves
To understand why doctors and nurses continue to rely on pagers of all things, it’s important to understand how the things work. Pagers aren’t like cellphones or smartphones. Unlike these devices, they do not rely on cellular networks or wi-fi. They don’t use the Internet. Instead, pagers work over radio waves.
A more descriptive term for a pager would be a ‘personal radio receiver’. Pagers are often one-way, with later pagers allowing for two-way communication through a mobile transmitter inside the pager.
Rather than using a cellular network or the Internet, the transmitter sends low-power radio waves through different antennae, pinging satellites which send the signal back through a variety of pager towers. Unlike cellular networks, if one pager tower is down, another picks up the signal.
Because the wavelength of the airwaves that pagers use are longer than those used by cellphones, the signal travels further through the concrete walls of a hospital, ensuring that messages are received nearly instantaneously in every nook and cranny of the building, unlike cell networks which come with dead zones and lead to dropped calls or late messages.
Pagers Don’t Need to Be Charged
A modern-day smartphone lasts about a day before requiring charging. With sparing use or larger batteries, smartphones can last two days. Very rarely do modern phones last longer than 48 hours before requiring a charge. While power banks largely fix this issue, the larger ones can be a relative chore to lug around and keep charged.
Pagers bypass the issue by using batteries. While many of the devices we use today use rechargeable lithium-ion battery packs, plenty of devices still rely on dry cell batteries, and they’re both inexpensive and easy to find.
Even with heavy use, many pagers last several weeks on a single set of batteries. Of course, some pagers use rechargeable lithium ion batteries, but they still use far less power than most cellphones or smartphones.
Pagers Immediately Infer Important Work-Related Messages
Let’s face it – people don’t use pagers privately. The use of pagers dropped drastically with the introduction of the cellphone, just as cellphone use has been largely replaced by the worldwide availability of affordable smartphones and ever-expanding Internet access. This has its own unique benefit – health professionals know that when they receive a page, someone’s life might be on the line.
This gives messages received through pagers a significant priority, making it unlikely that a message goes ignored or lost. If doctors get critical information through cellphones or smartphones, that information may become lost amid a sea of different notifications and messages, some of which might be personal or far less consequential.
Pager messages, however, are always important, and a quick look at the display lets a doctor or nurse know whether they need to report to the ER, or whether it’s something they can deal with later.
Pagers Don’t Care About Overloaded Cell Networks
During a natural disaster or sudden crisis, cell networks may begin receiving countless messages of loved ones trying to reach each other, and gleam information on what’s going on. It’s in these critical moments that the ability to communicate seamlessly and instantly is priceless.
Medical professionals cannot rely on cell networks to remain stable and reliable when sudden emergencies strike, especially if they render the local cell tower destroyed or knock it out of commission. Pager messages can relay through several different towers, and don’t care if cellular networks are down. They’re a much more reliable way to communicate when organizing medical services during a disaster or crisis.
Pagers Are Tough to Break
Anyone knows that if you drop your phone from waist height, chances are you’re going to crack your screen, dent your case, or even render the phone unusable. However, doctors and physicians lead a very active professional lifestyle.
They’re on the move and need to get from point A to point B relatively quickly. In the heat of the moment, a doctor can easily damage their phone accidentally. Most pagers, however, are more durable than the average smartphone. They’re not the easiest things to break and boast a much greater lifespan than the average smartphone, which begins to experience major battery and component problems after just a handful of years.
Pager Alternatives Can Be Expensive
Simply switching from pagers to What’s App or any other common instant messaging app isn’t a good idea. Patient information needs to be handled in a certain way to avoid triggering HIPAA laws. Additionally, many messaging apps aren’t secure enough to handle this information.
To ensure real, substantial benefits of the pager, a communication system needs to offer reliable, encrypted, and asynchronous communication, while giving medical professionals an overview of patient information through EMR/EHR, and the ability to contact other doctors individually or in groups to respond to certain requests. Such systems have been piloted in different hospitals, but they aren’t cheap.
And while such a transition can provide doctors with a wide variety of benefits over the pager, two main issues prevail: availability and reliability. These phones need to stay charged, and still rely on wireless access to the Internet to move information through the cloud.
Pagers Have Their Cons
That isn’t to say that pagers are perfect. Aside from the fact that they’re more than mildly irritating to listen to (which, arguably, is a plus when their primary function is to get one’s attention), many doctors use one-way pagers.
This means that when they receive a message that requires a reply, they have to find the time to sit down and call a number to relay their message. This can take some time and can be a genuine chore over simply replying through your own device.
Pagers aren’t always secure, and it’s much easier to intercept a pager message than it is to intercept a text message or private communication through the Internet. All it takes is an antennae, a USB dongle, and some open-source software.
Pagers also have a limit in the information they can transmit, which leaves massive gaps in communication.
Conclusion
While better pager services can fix these issues (through encryption and two-way devices), it’s clear that there’s a need for modernization in hospitals, and the biggest obstacle is reliability. Right now, pagers are fulfilling a need that newer technologies cannot fulfill. Change is inevitable, but it’s unclear when it’ll occur.
