A comparison study on the effectiveness of pager and telephone systems during emergency department consultations and length of stay of consulted emergency department patients

Aim: Emergency department (ED) physicians use different tools and modalities to communicate with consulted clinical divisions in all over the world. Domestic phones, pagers, consultation stations, mobile phones and smart phone applications are commonly used examples. They have a changing trend over time and technology in practice. We evaluated the effectiveness of the consultations conducted by telephone and pager systems, compared the functionality of both systems and investigated their effects on length of stay (LOS) of the patients in the ED of a tertiary teaching hospital. Material and methods: The study was planned as prospective and descriptive. The consulted patients in ED were assigned for the study group. The domestic telephones and pagers with central operating system were used as an ED consultation tool for a two-week period, respectively and separately. LOS and consultation response time (CRT) were evaluated. Results: Three hundred eighteen consultations were requested for a total of 228 patients. The most frequently requested consultations were from Cardiology (17.6%), General Surgery (14.2%) and Orthopaedics (13.5%). When the telephone and pager systems were compared independently from the departments, CRT was found significantly longer via telephone compared to pager (52 min vs. 18 min; p=0.56, p=0.04). The LOS was 353 min for telephone, 314 min for pager but these results were not statistically significant (p>0.05). Conclusion: The pager system for consultation request is a time and energy reducing option for ED physicians. In addition, it shortens CRT for the patients with high urgency levels. However there is no significant difference between both methods on LOS