Out with the pager, in with role based messaging
An advancement on the traditional pager, role based messaging (RBM) is used by clinicians when they need to communicate between specialities and departments across the hospital.
It’s supporting quicker and more effective communication and saving clinician’s time.
The latest episode of the Let’s talk eHealth NSW podcast discusses role based messaging in hospitals and the positive impact its having.
Professor Naren Gunja is the Chief Medical Information Officer at Western Sydney Local Health District (WSLHD). An emergency physician with more than 25 years’ experience at Western Sydney, he was a guest on the podcast.
Prof Naren explains,
“Role based messaging is predominately there to replace the pager.”
He uses the example an emergency department doctor seeing a patient who needs to contact the plastics team. But instead of paging a specific person or number – without knowing if that person is working or available – RBM connects you with a specialty and can be answered by a person from that team.
It’s a solution built on the Microsoft Teams platform, allowing for video calls, audio calls and instant messaging.
As staff across the hospital are familiar with using Teams, it made choosing the platform a logical decision.
“It doesn’t take a lot of time to learn. In fact we’ve done almost no training,” Prof Naren said.
As well as offering more functionality than the traditional pager, it also saves time as staff can utilise RBM on mobile devices while they’re on the move or with patients.
“The time of waiting by a landline to page somebody is over,” he said.
Parts of WSLHD were the first in the state to pilot the new initiative, playing an important role of giving it a go and sharing feedback to make the solution the best that it can be.
Following the successful pilot in 2024, role based messaging is available and being used across all Western Sydney facilities.
Listen to the full episode now, by eHealth Podcasts.