Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Sorry, doctor, I paged the wrong resident
Ever been paged when you're no longer on call? It's probably no surprise to learn you're not alone. In a recent issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, Canadian researchers looked at two months' worth of pager records from two tertiary care academic teaching hospitals to determine how often residents were paged when they weren't supposed to be. A page was considered a "wrong number" when it involved a resident who was off duty (postcall, on vacation, etc.) and out of the hospital. The authors found that of 10,190 pages studied, 1,409, or 14%, were misdirected. Of those 1,409 "wrong number" pages, 15% were considered emergency pages needing immediate attention and 32% were considered urgent pages needing a response within an hour.
How long does it take to discover a paging error, track down the correct physician, page him or her, and wait for the response? Regardless, it's time wasted. "These incorrect pages create delays and inefficiencies in care that disrupt workflow and represent potential threats to patient safety," the authors wrote. "We believe that the frequency of pages sent to the wrong physician is too high and are taking steps to reduce the potential for these errors."
posted by Jennifer Kearney-Strouse at
3:18 PM
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