Anxious parents waiting while their child has surgery at the Royal United Hospitals Bath NHS Foundation Trust (RUH) are now being given pagers to alert them when all is well.

What began as a trial in the Recovery Unit has proved so successful, that it is now being extended to other areas across the hospital. Instead of being contacted by their mobile phone, parents are now given a pager, which bleeps to let them know when their child is waking up.

Consultant anaesthetist Fiona Kelly, who helped set up the initiative, said: “Mobile phones aren’t always reliable – some parents have their phone turned off or turned down, and some might not have a mobile. We have shown that a personal pager is a much more reliable way of contacting them when they are needed.

“A pager gives parents or carers a sense of reassurance and lets them have a break. They also guarantee that parents can be easily called when they are needed, meaning they can be quickly reunited with their child in recovery. This gives them a greater sense of control.”

Some 3,000 children from two months to eighteen-years-old are anaesthetised each year at the RUH. A 2017 survey showed that, before the pager system was introduced, it took an average of 23 minutes for a parent to rejoin their child in the Recovery Unit, and 70% of children waited for more than fifteen minutes. Using the pagers has cut that time to an average 2.8 minutes, with no child waiting more than eleven minutes.

Fiona Kelly said: “The feedback has been really positive, with parents saying how big a benefit the pagers are, improving their child’s experience and making it much less stressful for them.”

Kerry and Neil Sidwick were given a parent pager when their son Charlie had an operation to have four teeth removed. Kerry said: “The pager gave us reassurance that we would not miss Charlie waking up. It meant we could pop and get a coffee without risking not being there for him.”

The pagers were funded by the Friends of the RUH charity and the Trust’s Innovation Panel, where staff pitch for funding for ideas that improve patient care and experience and efficiency. Identical pagers have been successfully introduced in the Intensive Care Unit for family and friends of patients, and it is now hoped to roll out pagers in Pharmacy and in other wards and hospital areas. The pager programme is supported by the Trust’s Patient Experience Team.