Darwin Awards

The hospital I work at is a lot like a jungle, and I'm not actually referring to the occasional large cockroach that roams the hallway at night, nor the animal burrow we use for a call room. I'm talking about the hospital paging system.

The hospital paging system functions as a sort of natural selection. It is the most basic and fundamental means of communication in the hospital. As such, one must master it in order to survive. Here's how it works.

1. Dial the pager number of the person you want to talk to.
2. Wait for a beep.
3. Dial your call-back number.
4. The person calls you back.

Voila! This sounds straightforward, and it is, usually. However, some people just can't figure it out and thus they can never get anything accomplished and are eventually devoured by carnivores. These blunders fall into a few categories.

1. The person doesn't enter an actual phone number after the beep, but rather one or two digits at most. How can I call you back at the number 4? That's not a phone number. This may cause me to blurt loudly, "Stop the presses! The number 4 is having an emergency!" This response may sound rude (and confirm suspicions about my level of sanity to bystanders), but we don't call it pager-tude for nothing! Often times the offender realizes the error and re-pages. There is some hope for intelligent communication in such circumstances.

2. The person pages me and immediately forgets why. Now I realize that we are all busy, but the fact that I am extremely neurotic and beholden to my pager (a.k.a. noise-maker a.k.a. pain-box) means that I return all my pages within 3 bijilliseconds. How can you have already forgotten why you paged me? Confidence NOT inspired...

3. The entire concept/practice of paging entirely evades the individual. It goes something like this:

"I have been trying to page neurosurgery for days, and no one has called me back!"
That is strange indeed, considering our pager number has been the same for 10 years. May I suggest you stop "trying" to page us and follow the simple steps 1-4 listed above and actually page us. Or perhaps don't bother. Your choice. Either way, I'm sure you'll be devoured by carnivores shortly...

Now, it is important to note that the surgeons I work with do not use the hospital paging system. This is not because they can't, but rather they no longer need to. They are so high up on the food chain that they have underlings like me to do the dirty work, and would never consider stooping to such levels. In fact, I carry a portable phone (a.k.a. noise-maker a.k.a. bat-phone) at all times that only they know the super-secret number to, so I can always be reached to do their bidding.