{"id":3118,"date":"2012-08-17T14:39:57","date_gmt":"2012-08-17T18:39:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/?p=3118"},"modified":"2015-06-04T15:14:06","modified_gmt":"2015-06-04T19:14:06","slug":"beeper-an-enthusiastic-farewell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/beeper-an-enthusiastic-farewell\/2012\/08\/17\/","title":{"rendered":"Beeper, An Enthusiastic Farewell!"},"content":{"rendered":"

August 17, 2012, is the first day in over 25 years\u00a0that I left for work without clipping a beeper to my belt.<\/p>\n

Yes, our hospital now offers paging through cell phones. Eureka!<\/p>\n

As I’ve written before<\/a>, it was a long time coming. Here are some advantages:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Spares the embarrassment\u00a0of wearing a circa-1980s device around non-MD colleagues.<\/li>\n
  2. Portrays a more slimming profile for the fashion-conscious.<\/li>\n
  3. Reduces electromagnetic waves so close to reproductive organs.<\/li>\n
  4. Saves money on AA batteries.<\/li>\n
  5. Diminishes landfill contamination from discarded alkaline cells.<\/li>\n
  6. Decreases the number of items one risks losing, breaking, dropping in the toilet, etc.<\/li>\n
  7. Sheds unfortunate association with drug dealers.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    I’m sure there are more, but regardless, I was bound to be an early adopter of a non-beeper life. Yesterday, after passing in the beeper, I almost expected there to be some sort of ritual ceremony, something akin to what they just did in London at the end of the Olympics.<\/p>\n

    Here then, for posterity’s sake, is the very first page I received on my cell phone, courtesy of our Education Coordinator Margot:<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

    For the record, the answer to my question was yes<\/em> — she did get my text response in her email. Yet another benefit of chucking the one-way pager.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    August 17, 2012, is the first day in over 25 years\u00a0that I left for work without clipping a beeper to my belt. Yes, our hospital now offers paging through cell phones. Eureka! As I’ve written before, it was a long time coming. Here are some advantages: Spares the embarrassment\u00a0of wearing a circa-1980s device around non-MD […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,8],"tags":[108,174,689],"class_list":["post-3118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health-care","category-patient-care","tag-beepers","tag-cell-phones","tag-pagers"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3118"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3118\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}