Physician Communication: Removing Hassles For On-Call Providers And The Clinicians Trying To Reach Them

By Benjamin Kanter, Vocera

Quality and Safety in Patient Care

Meg Shaw, a nurse on a hospital’s rapid response team, completes an examination of a patient recovering from surgery. The patient’s primary nurse had requested rapid response team assistance after being alerted that her patient had a low oxygen saturation and subsequently observing that her patient’s speech was slurred.

Meg contacts the patient’s attending physician, Dr. Fox, who asks that Meg request an emergency consult from the on-call neurologist.

After ending the call with Dr. Fox, Meg pushes the Call button on her Vocera Badge and says, “Call on-call neurologist.” Notice that she doesn’t have to locate the on-call schedule or know who the on-call neurologist is by name.

The on-call neurologist, using Vocera’s mobile app on his smartphone, sees the call is identified as originating from a rapid response team member and answers immediately.