KEY POINTS:
The after-hours hospital pager - as seen on television doctors worldwide - will soon bleep its last at Auckland Hospital.
Its replacement, an interactive call system called iBleep, has been set up at a number of the hospital's wards, with others to follow.
Auckland District Health Board is the first organisation in the Southern Hemisphere to stock the futuristic system, which uses cellphones and looks more like a PalmPilot than a pager.
The board's project manager for after-hours model of care, Rosemary Pearson, told the Herald yesterday that traditional pagers were phoned by nurses on ward phones. All the doctors' pagers told them was the phone numbers the call was from. The nurses then had to wait by the phone for the paged doctors to call back. Only then could they give the doctors information about patients' symptoms.
The iBleep system sent far more information, Mrs Pearson said. The doctor immediately saw which patient was involved, the patient's information and room number, and the call's priority - ranked red, amber or green to determine the urgency of assistance required.
If a red or amber call was raised, relevant patient observations were also entered, using the ward's centralcomputer.
That information included oxygen saturation, heart rate, blood pressure, respiration rate, temperature, level of consciousness and urine flow.
The doctor could then use that detail to prioritise the call, making sure patients with the most urgent needs were seen first.
The system also meant the nurse making the call would know the instant the doctor had read the message, eliminating the need for multiple calls, Mrs Pearson said.
That all added up to far more efficient clinical care, and reduced time waiting for care for the patient.
The iBleep has already been issued to more than 25 areas of medicine and surgery throughout the health board.
It will be used in women's health from tonight, paediatrics in October and mental health in November.
Mrs Pearson said hospital areas with a full-time doctor presence, including the emergency department, did not need the iBleep.
