What exactly is shown on the pagers carried around in House MD or Scrubs?
It seems that the cast can get to know almost anything just by reading the page that they get: whether there's an emergency with a patient or where they are being called to?
I thought pagers just showed a particular number which the doctor had to call separately to find out what the emergency was, at least that's what I noticed many a times in other medical shows such as Scrubs. Or is it that since Scrubs began in 2001 and House MD in 2004, the pagers have improved in that span?
Best Answer
There are several reasons why pagers are still being used by medical professionals in a hospital setting. I am a nurse working in a hospital setting and although there have been discussions about moving to smartphones, pagers are still the preferred form of communication.
Pagers offer several advantages over smartphones:
Information must be able to be reliable. Cellular networks cannot always be reliable
There is no need to charge a pager
There is high cost to maintain a smartphone account for a hospital
There is risk of security breaches. HIPAA violations can easily be breached using a smartphone
There is always a signal available with a pager
There is no need to sort through other messages. The pager simply alerts the hospital staff with the code that they are needed for.
99% of the time that a physician receives a page, it is within the hospital, receiving status on a patient or being called to an emergency. These are communicated through codes throughout the hospital that all staff is aware of.
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What shows up on a pager?
A pager (also known as a beeper or bleeper) is a wireless telecommunications device that receives and displays alphanumeric or voice messages. One-way pagers can only receive messages, while response pagers and two-way pagers can also acknowledge, reply to and originate messages using an internal transmitter.Do doctors get paged on their phones?
Pretty much everyone has a smartphone\u2014or at least a cell phone\u2014but hospitals just haven't caught up with the times. In fact, nearly 80 percent of hospitals still use pagers, according to a study from the Journal of Hospital Medicine. No, doctors aren't just stubborn about leaving the dinosaur age of communication.How far does a hospital pager reach?
A single paging transmitter site typically covers 176 square miles, while a typical cell site covers only 10 to 15 square miles. Pager systems typically provide better coverage in rugged and remote terrain than cellular networks.How accurate is the show Scrubs?
Scrubs (2001-2010) Surprisingly, TV comedy Scrubs ranks as the most realistic medical show with an overall score of an 9/10. Though not perfect \u2014 no medical show is \u2014 Scrubs manages to capture the residency training process and the dynamics of a hospital. Plus, it has realistic cases!Real Doctor Reacts to HOUSE M.D. | Medical Drama Review | Doctor Mike
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Answer 2
Pager technology has always allowed arbitrary alphanumeric (A-Z, a-z, 0-9, some special characters) messages of various lengths. How they are used depends on the person or company using them. Typically, short medical codes can be used, to indicate a longer or complicated situation, but proper length messages can be sent as well. Pagers can scroll messages that are longer than the display, so they are not limited to 10 or 16 or n Characters. Depending on the service really, as some have a 240 character limit. Text messages, aka SMS, in comparison are limited to 160 ASCII characters.
Tangent: No different than SMS, except most pager companies have dedicated hardware/antenna, and for medical contracts, have some minimum guaranteed service contracts. These service contracts dictate downtime, message delivery times, etc.
SMS is a fairly faulty protocol and has somewhere like 10% failure rate, requiring 15~20% resend rate. SMS is an (ab)use of the cellular side bands, bands that are normally used for control between a cell phone and tower. SMS is a giant cluster hack of a technology. SMS/Cellular technology, mainly the wavelength/bandwidth being used, was previously very bad at wall penetration, while Pager tech had much better coverage. Distance was also a factor (Cellular cell sites are often >20 miles at best, Pager sites are 100+ miles). There is also the usage of Simulcasting/broadcasting of Pager messages among multiple cells, while Cellular technology will only connect on a single cell tower. There are multiple technological reasons for Pager technology still being persuasive.
As we never see the messages on House, it's speculation on whether it is code or text.
Answer 3
I know this is a little late, but here is what is shown in a pager in S1E9 of House.
MSG RECEIVED...
CODE BLUE: JOHN HENRY
GILES - RM. 324
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