The Five Stages of Accepting Your Pager

I had a pager in medical school, but it rarely made any noise. The nurses, residents, and fellows were far too busy to page a lowly medical student to see a procedure, and so the pager's only assigned tasks were to devour AAA batteries and to beep when it required fresh meat. Now my new residency pager not only devours AA batters (bigger is better), it's buzzer goes off with responsibility. The nurses need to page me for tasks at 3 am like "the patient in room 807 is gassy and could you please order some gas drops." I don't mind getting paged and checking in on the patients, but it did take a few weeks to get to this state of acceptance. I present to you my model: The Five Stages of Accepting Your Pager.

Stage 1: Brief Elation

July 1st is just a blurry memory overcast by my nervousness. There were not only butterflies in my stomach, there were angry giant pterodactyls. I was hyperaware of the weight of my pager on my hip, but with it's first buzz I was kinda excited. A page! For ME! I could now pick up the phone, dial the number, and say "Hi, this is Dr. R. I was paged." (I said Farrah, but still- I could've said Doctor if I wanted to). The cherry on top was they needed me, not the resident above me, not the fellow, not the attending, ME! It's nice to feel needed.

Stage 2: Denial

What is that buzzing noise? ... ... ... hmm, somebody's pager must be going off ... ... ... Oh CRAP! It's my pager.

Stage 3: Anger

At this stage, you start visibly cringing when you feel the first vibration, and your eyes narrow as you lift up the pager to see who needs you now. You start to recognize certain series of numbers and hold grudges against those numbers. For me it was 2811, which meant I had to go to a delivery. I can tell you right now neonatal resuscitation protocol is not enough training to let you handle what goes down in a delivery.

Stage 4: Bargaining

I'll take 500 pages in the next 5 minutes if I just don't get paged between the hours of 1 and 5 am.

Stage 5: Acceptance

At this point, I knew enough to handle simple problems I was paged with - "why yes I will write for some gas drops." I also knew how to reach somebody above me if I needed them. I could better understand the paperwork and how to write most orders. I knew the patients better by this time too so I knew which ones needed to be checked on before I even went to bed. The initial terror and nerves of residency were on longer operating at 100%, they were toned down to maybe 75% of capacity. I know now that no matter who pages me, I have backup and it's going to be okay.

--By Farrah, who's finds herself inadvertently slipping into a Southern accent several dozen times per day