I've had similar experiences, learning many hours later that an elderly relative had taken a field trip to the ER, or in a few cases even had round-trip transpo

I've had similar experiences, learning many hours later that an elderly relative had taken a field trip to the ER, or in a few cases even had round-trip transport back to the care home before I knew what was going on. But I've also had the absurd opposite, where I think the hospital IT system must be triggering some workflow events and it causes a thundering herd problem. One example: Visiting my in-patient relative, I was called into a hallway by a nurse, as the doctor would be coming to discuss something. Before we could even start, I got an incoming call from the same hospital system which turned out to be a care coordinator trying to discuss the same patient. While I was trying to triage that call and not waste the doctor's time too much, I heard the call waiting beep. That turned out to be an affiliated social worker spawned onto the same case. I let her go to voicemail. Within 5 minutes, I got another call from a durable equipment vendor who was processing an order just put in for the patient. This became a repeating pattern. Along with all the other stress of handling my family member's illness, this pushed me too far. For the first time in my life, I started to flinch or startle at incoming calls and notifications. It got worse with frequent and randomized calls from the relative, who suffers from dementia. I started to form a new understanding of the stories I'd heard of younger generations having phone-based anxieties.