If you are a radio scanning enthusiast, a hospital might seem like an interesting place to spend a few hours with a scanner, in my case it has been a few days. There are plenty of radios around. Staff are constantly moving between departments, security is communicating, ambulances are arriving and leaving, and there is a whole infrastructure of communications operating around you.
So, naturally, you might think: This should be a great place to scan. In reality, my experience has been almost the complete opposite. Scanning from a hospital bed is a surprisingly poor experience.
One of the advantages of modern scanners is that they are incredibly portable. A radio such as my Uniden UBCD436PT can easily fit into a small case with spare batteries, headphones, antennas and accessories. It can run quietly from a battery and doesn't need to be connected to anything else.
So taking a scanner into hospital isn't particularly difficult from an equipment perspective. The problem is everything around it. A hospital is simply not a good environment for actually enjoying the hobby.
You Don't Really Have the Time, the biggest problem is attention. When you're in hospital, your day is constantly interrupted. A nurse comes in. A doctor comes in. Someone wants to take your observations. Someone wants to give you medication. Someone needs to move you to another area. You get called for a scan, blood test, ECG or another procedure. Then there are phone calls, messages and the general activity of the ward.
So take your scanner with you, but it might not get a whole lot of use.
Scanning is a hobby that benefits from being able to sit down and listen for a while. Hospital doesn't really provide that opportunity. You might hear something interesting on the scanner, only to have someone walk into the room and start talking to you. By the time you're finished, you've missed the interesting traffic.
Another problem is the noise. Hospitals are rarely quiet. There are alarms, televisions, conversations, doors opening and closing, equipment moving around and people coming and going.
Even with headphones, it can be difficult to concentrate on radio traffic. This is particularly frustrating when you're listening to a digital system. With something like DMR or another digital mode, you want to be able to pay attention to the conversation and understand what is happening. Trying to follow a digital conversation while someone is taking your blood pressure isn't exactly ideal.
Hospitals can also be challenging radio environments. You are surrounded by concrete, steel, glass, electrical equipment and multiple floors. Depending on where you are in the building, reception can change dramatically. You can have a perfectly usable signal in one location and then walk a few metres down a corridor and find that the signal has disappeared.
This can actually make hospital scanning technically interesting. From a radio perspective, the building becomes an enormous experiment in RF propagation. But when you're there as a patient, you're probably not in the mood to conduct propagation experiments.
When I'm scanning normally, I can have the radio sitting beside me while I work on something else. I can change antennas, adjust settings, check a frequency or switch systems whenever I want.
In hospital, even something as simple as keeping the scanner charged becomes another thing to think about.
Ironically, while hospital is a poor place for enjoying scanning, it can be an interesting place for radio experimentation.
Hospitals are excellent examples of how modern radio systems have evolved.
Having the UBCD436PT with me has still been worthwhile. Its compact size, battery operation and ability to search and analyse signals make it a practical radio to carry.
The Discovery features are particularly useful because I don't necessarily need to know exactly what I'm looking for before I start. I can let the scanner search, see what turns up and investigate interesting signals when I have the opportunity. The recorder is also useful because I don't have to sit there concentrating on the scanner constantly.
But even with a capable scanner, the environment still wins. Ultimately, this is the real reason scanning in hospital isn't much fun.
You're in hospital because something else is taking priority. Your health comes first.
If you're tired, uncomfortable, worried, waiting for test results or simply trying to get through the day, scanning isn't necessarily going to provide the same enjoyment it normally does.
