In-hospital paging systems: an effective method of communication between hospital staff in 2015?

摘要

Policies in relation to paging are designed to achieve effective in-hospital communication. This study recorded dataudin relation to pages received by interns over a two-week period. A survey was conducted assessing perceptions onudpaging and existing hospital policy. Four interns collected data in relation to 20 regular-day, 4 extended-day and 4udon-call (two weekday and two weekend) shifts (n=423 pages). Sixty-nine pages (16%) were made during pager-freeudperiods. On average 3 minutes per hour were spent dealing with pages. Compliance with ISBAR ranged from 50.1% toud83.4%. Of the episodes where pages were made during protected times (n=85), 67% did not meet urgent criteria. Whileudthe majority of these pages were from nurses, they were less likely to violate the policy than other staff (relativeudrisk 0.648, p=0.016). Efforts need to be made to ensure pager-free periods are respected in the interest of effectiveudcommunication, staff morale and protected training time.