We call it a bleep.
I don’t know why…well actually…it bleeps…therefore it is a bleep. But it is a bit of an arbitrary name.
On Greys they call it a pager… (Which if you think about it is an even more arbitrary name). A pager is an upgrade however.
Pagers are standard issue with each pair of designer scrubs (in the real world scrubs are the least attractive item of clothing you will ever wear). They never sound annoying, if anything they sound ‘cool’, much like the letters D and R in front of your surname. And pagers can convey large volumes of information with a single ‘bleep’… exactly where you need to be, which patient you need to be seeing, their temperature, pulse rate and oxygen saturation!
Bleeps are a little bit less attractive.
Health care on a budget means that bleeps are communal. Certainly registrar bleeps are eventually individually issued albeit not with a smashing pair of baby blues. Intern bleeps are shared. They are the baton passed between post call and on call victims.
They have usually passed their sell by date and hence are invariably held together by Elastoplast. They come with 2 settings…off and infernal irritation. They are loud at 2 in the afternoon. They get exponentially louder with each hour after midnight. They do one of two basic things…they bleep (because they are bleeps) and they flash numbers of wards, extensions at the lab, extensions in theatre etc.
Pretty much after one or two calls you develop a little bit of bleep ESP and can anticipate what information the bleep would convey if it were a pager.
For example; if it’s a number starting with a 5 it means it’s a phone in theatre and it’s either your registrar telling you to get your butt over here and scrub in, or get your butt over to casualty and sort out the patients because I am in theatre, or it’s the anaesthetist shouting for more blood.
Ward bleeps are the bane of one’s existence.
“Dr…I have 3 drips for you”, is code for I actually have 5 and I’ll definitely find another one to pull out before you arrive.
“Dr…Mr X has got nothing written up for pain”…Code for he’s making me get up from my comfortable chair and ruining my tea break, won’t you come write up some morphine/strong sedation.
“Dr…We need some Augmentin from the drug cupboard”…a protracted excursion which involves coming to the ward to get the patients details…missioning to E floor security for the key…missioning to D floor to the Emergency Drug Cupboard…back to E floor to take back the key…back to the ward to drop of the Augmentin.
“Dr…Mr X doesn’t look so good”…Code for imminent resuscitation required.
“Dr…the patient is gasping”…Code for inevitable death certification approaching.
What is great about ward bleeps is the speed at which the person who ‘bleeped’ you can get away from the phone from which they ‘bleeped’ which results in a speedy reply on your part and a less than speedy pick-up on the other side. But my personal favourite is when they won’t answer the phone but somehow manage to bleep you twice in the time it takes you to answer the first bleep.
Strangely bleeps are probably the most annoying when they don’t bleep.
They create an uneasy disquiet that there are drips that need resiting, drugs that need fetching, blood that needs hanging, patients that are not breathing and that at some ridiculous hour the bleep will start bleeping.
Because when they are quiet it means that you can sit down, which invariably leads to slumping, which invariably leads to sleeping, and the possibility that your exhaustion may be so ‘human’ that you will sleep right through the infernal ‘bleeping’ and have to explain to some angry senior person in the morning, why someone who should have been resuscitated is now being certified.
Consequently even if you strike it lucky and are not required for these mundane tasks at 2 in the morning, you cat nap and wake up every hour or so to make sure that you haven’t missed a bleep, or that the stupid thing is still working. And so even when they are not bleeping…in a way they are.
I have a friend, a new graduate to non-Greys Anatomy medicine, who a few days before her first bleep call commented on that very fact and may have used the words “I can’t wait to have a bleep!” I held my tongue and smiled quietly and came to fetch it from her the next morning. With dark circles under her eyes and that distinctive hour-24 ponytail she practically threw it at me and may have said something like “Take it! Take it! I hate this stupid thing!!!!!”
Yes, at first glance bleeps look cool…they have sparkle pager deception. Turns out, it’s just another Greys Anatomy ruse.
I don’t know why…well actually…it bleeps…therefore it is a bleep. But it is a bit of an arbitrary name.
On Greys they call it a pager… (Which if you think about it is an even more arbitrary name). A pager is an upgrade however.
Pagers are standard issue with each pair of designer scrubs (in the real world scrubs are the least attractive item of clothing you will ever wear). They never sound annoying, if anything they sound ‘cool’, much like the letters D and R in front of your surname. And pagers can convey large volumes of information with a single ‘bleep’… exactly where you need to be, which patient you need to be seeing, their temperature, pulse rate and oxygen saturation!
Bleeps are a little bit less attractive.
Health care on a budget means that bleeps are communal. Certainly registrar bleeps are eventually individually issued albeit not with a smashing pair of baby blues. Intern bleeps are shared. They are the baton passed between post call and on call victims.
They have usually passed their sell by date and hence are invariably held together by Elastoplast. They come with 2 settings…off and infernal irritation. They are loud at 2 in the afternoon. They get exponentially louder with each hour after midnight. They do one of two basic things…they bleep (because they are bleeps) and they flash numbers of wards, extensions at the lab, extensions in theatre etc.
Pretty much after one or two calls you develop a little bit of bleep ESP and can anticipate what information the bleep would convey if it were a pager.
For example; if it’s a number starting with a 5 it means it’s a phone in theatre and it’s either your registrar telling you to get your butt over here and scrub in, or get your butt over to casualty and sort out the patients because I am in theatre, or it’s the anaesthetist shouting for more blood.
Ward bleeps are the bane of one’s existence.
“Dr…I have 3 drips for you”, is code for I actually have 5 and I’ll definitely find another one to pull out before you arrive.
“Dr…Mr X has got nothing written up for pain”…Code for he’s making me get up from my comfortable chair and ruining my tea break, won’t you come write up some morphine/strong sedation.
“Dr…We need some Augmentin from the drug cupboard”…a protracted excursion which involves coming to the ward to get the patients details…missioning to E floor security for the key…missioning to D floor to the Emergency Drug Cupboard…back to E floor to take back the key…back to the ward to drop of the Augmentin.
“Dr…Mr X doesn’t look so good”…Code for imminent resuscitation required.
“Dr…the patient is gasping”…Code for inevitable death certification approaching.
What is great about ward bleeps is the speed at which the person who ‘bleeped’ you can get away from the phone from which they ‘bleeped’ which results in a speedy reply on your part and a less than speedy pick-up on the other side. But my personal favourite is when they won’t answer the phone but somehow manage to bleep you twice in the time it takes you to answer the first bleep.
Strangely bleeps are probably the most annoying when they don’t bleep.
They create an uneasy disquiet that there are drips that need resiting, drugs that need fetching, blood that needs hanging, patients that are not breathing and that at some ridiculous hour the bleep will start bleeping.
Because when they are quiet it means that you can sit down, which invariably leads to slumping, which invariably leads to sleeping, and the possibility that your exhaustion may be so ‘human’ that you will sleep right through the infernal ‘bleeping’ and have to explain to some angry senior person in the morning, why someone who should have been resuscitated is now being certified.
Consequently even if you strike it lucky and are not required for these mundane tasks at 2 in the morning, you cat nap and wake up every hour or so to make sure that you haven’t missed a bleep, or that the stupid thing is still working. And so even when they are not bleeping…in a way they are.
I have a friend, a new graduate to non-Greys Anatomy medicine, who a few days before her first bleep call commented on that very fact and may have used the words “I can’t wait to have a bleep!” I held my tongue and smiled quietly and came to fetch it from her the next morning. With dark circles under her eyes and that distinctive hour-24 ponytail she practically threw it at me and may have said something like “Take it! Take it! I hate this stupid thing!!!!!”
Yes, at first glance bleeps look cool…they have sparkle pager deception. Turns out, it’s just another Greys Anatomy ruse.
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