New uses of old technology: Can nurse-pagers improve communication between resident-physicians and nurses.

Background: Alphanumeric paging is underutilized, despite being the standard mode of communication between physicians and nurses at many hospitals across the United States.

Objective: We hypothesized that an educational program designed to teach optimal alphanumeric paging behavior in conjunction with providing nurses with alphanumeric pagers would improve the quality and efficiency of nurse pages.

Methods: We implemented an educational program to teach nurses about optimal alphanumeric paging, defined as including four important components-patient identification, clinical scenario, sender identification, and callback number.