NEW YORK, NY – Medical intern Cardi Accath is nearing the end of her first month of inpatient medicine and she finally feels ready to take things to the next level. Every day for two weeks now she’s been paging Renal fellow Alec Trolyte to the work phone in the 17th floor call room to get recs for her patient with Alport syndrome who, unable to hear his coworker’s warnings, accidently drank a pint of ethylene glycol. She thinks it might be time to exchange phone numbers!
Pagers have been hospital mainstays since the 1940s, even as newer technologies like mobile phones have supplanted them in the general population. But in the medical industry, they continue to provide cheap, disaster-safe communication between health professionals, with the added benefit of shackling interns to a single hospital phone for half an hour at a time.
“But what if he says no?” continued Accath, “I’m not being too forward, am I? Am I moving things along too soon? One of my co-interns gave her phone number to this GI fellow last week, but then he kept paging her anyways!”
Trolyte could not be reached for immediate comment. At time of press, Gomerblog was still at the prison ward nurses station waiting for a call back from Renal.
