Staff Emergency!!

At Fairview, the hospital of my employment, we have to carry around pagers.  I have a love/hate relationship with them.  They're informative and our job would be more difficult without them, but sometimes you just want to throw it against a wall and then stomp on it 50 times until it's unrecognizable OR throw it out the window into the Mississippi never to be found again.  Whenever a patient's call light goes off, the HUC (secretary)  will usually answer the light at the desk, find out what the patient wants, and then text page the Nurse or Nursing Assistant with what the patient needs.  We also get pages for phone calls, when the Dr's are ready for rounds, when a family member or random Dr is at the desk to speak to you, when the trays have arrived, and we even have a page to remind us to turn our pagers in at the end of the day.  If the page isn't answered within a certain amount of time, which does happen-if you're in the middle of a sterile dressing change, or just plain busy with a patient...but say you got stuck in one of those rooms, and one of your other pages isn't being answered after a certain amount of time your pager will just vibrate non-stop until it gets answered.  That's about the time when I envision myself pulling one of the above tricks on my beeper.  

Anyway, the root of all this nonsense, is located in the patients room.  They have a call light on their bed that they push to let someone know they need something.  When one goes to answer the light, there is a button on the wall to turn the call light off for that room.  There also lies another button right next to it that you would push if you came across an emergency situation.  In that case, everyone gets a page saying EMERGENCY RM. 510.  And you know how when there's a storm and one of those pages will come on over the radio saying "The National Weather Service has now issued a thunderstorm warning for the following counties..." A voice as such comes over the loudspeaker saying "STAFF EMERGENCY......STAFF EMERGENCY....STAFF EMERGENCY...." When I get a page as such, or hear that overhead, my reaction is my heart about drops to my stomach, my eyes become very wide open, and I get tense, and have thoughts racing in my brain.  Meanwhile, everyone comes running from multiple directions, nurses are peaking their head out of rooms to see if it's actually an emergency.....This happens at least once a shift....luckily not because there's actually an emergency, but because someone from housekeeping, or a patient or family member decided to push the wrong button.  The reaction I get to the above, I've realized has become a learned response.  Now, anytime I hear something remotely resembling the word staff, or a voice that sounds similar even when I'm not at work, my heart drops to my stomach, i become tense, and my eyes become wide open. Once I remind myself I'm not actually at work, I can breathe, but not a fun reaction to have when you're supposedly resting in Barnes & Noble reading a good book.  So, word to the wise, if you're ever visiting someone in the hospital...stay away from all buttons or you could create unnecessary strain or your poor nurses heart:)