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by randycupertino·3mo ago·view on hn ↗
When I was a respiratory therapist I was working a code in an ER for a motorcyclist crash, we were doing CPR and pushing meds and the MD uses Vocera, the digital hospital voice assistance dohicky we all wore on our collars to "call the X-Ray tech" and the stupid thing bleeps back in it's robot voice, "CALLING: PIZZA TRUCK."

It was one of the most surreal moments of my career. It was an emergency and the team was dialed in to saving this guy and the entire moment was just super "wtf!!" We all looked at each other and nobody really did anything. We all already hated Vocera with the fire of 10,000 suns and that dumbass moment just was the ultimate example of how dumb it was. The MD just moved on and barked at the ER tech to go get x-ray and to this day I am surprised he didn't rip the vocera off his collar and throw it across the room or put it on the ground and stomp on it.

Vocera was always a buggy piece of crap that was the miserable bane of our existence. After the code (the guy didn't make it) on of the nurses was smoking outside on the benches and was like "I didn't even know we had a pizza truck."

2 comments
Hey , just want to say thanks for doing such a hard job. I know I couldn't do that kind of work day in and day out. So thank you for doing the real hard work and making it all a better place for all of us.
Thank you! RT was actually way easier than nursing... RTs only deal with fluids from above the waistline.
Was the hate for Vocera shared among all who had to use it? How did it come to pass that you had to use Vocera?
Yes everyone hated it, but hospital admins forced us to use it. Giant hospital system with a enormous service provider contracts so user happiness and feedback isn't really a factor. The threads of people complaining about Vocera on reddit are pretty entertaining: https://www.reddit.com/r/nursing/comments/1lfavny/the_day_fi...

The most awesome voice system I ever used was the Motorola push to talk walkie talkies we used when I was a medic. Those things were bombproof and never lost signal, never f*cked up, just always worked, batteries last for weeks and were reliable af. Those things were the freaking BEST lol.