Saturday, March 5, 2011
Toll Free Calls?
I think the thing that takes the biggest toll on me while taking call is the constant barrage of phone calls. I understand the calls from the hospitals and the ERs and the patients who are recovering from surgery. It is the other types of calls which is the majority and the biggest pain in my side. We have an answering service that does their best to screen the calls and the phone system even says "if this is an emergency, hang up and dial 911." It doesn't make a difference, people lie to the answering service and you get calls like this. "text message: patient had surgery by Dr. (partner x) and now has severe nausea and vomiting." Of course it is 2 am. You call the patient, he is drunk. Turns out the surgery was a small office procedure 2 years ago. The patient is drunk and wants nausea medication called in because he doesn't want to still be puking in the morning. I give him the speech that we do not call in medications after hours and that we are on call for emergencies for which he calls me every name that would get my mouth washed out with soap as a kid. After he hung up and I dealt with other people calling for zpacks and antibiotics for their colds, I decided to look up the drunk guy on Google. Turns out he owns a bunch of car dealerships. I so wanted to call him back in the middle of the night and tell him that I had a headlight changed at one of his dealerships and want him to call in a new muffler for me at Autozone so I wouldn't have to have my car make so much noise in the morning.
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3 comments:
You're funny! :)
How rude of dirty mouth guy!
I know it is a serious concern for you and annoying as heck, but your wishful plotting to "enlighten" the guy would probably still find him clueless in the dark.
I am guessing that many patients who *should* call don't.,, because they don't want to bother the doctor. I know I have been one of those patients with urodocs. Yes ..I called when felt really bad and concerned ...but have had times when I called former coworkers instead. That probably wasn't the best route to go.
Even this past summer, when I blocked again ..I thought I had a kidney stone. the pain exacerbated greatly from about 10:30 pm until I finally couldn't take it and did call the service at about 05:30. I apologized for bothering him and my doc's partner was so sweet and said I should have called. Fortunately, I had left over pain med that got me thru the wee hours of the morning.
I know I could've called. I was trying to wait until daylight. I also wanted my husband to sleep since he had to work in am. It was a l-o-o-o-n-g night!
And I suppose when I have called friends(nurses) in past ..I should call docs because they would WANT to know if something important was going on.
And ...I suppose it is a bit of denial going on and wishful thinking that it really isn't all that bad.
I really think it is awful the way some people abuse the oncall service for unimportant or innappropriate reasons.
The aspect of call that really gets me comes from the nurses. I have recieved calls at 3 am from nurse indicating to me that Mr. X was constipated. When asked when for the last bm, it turns out that it was 24 hours previous. No GI distress, not acute abdomen. Just wanting an order for an enema. Similar calls constantly come in to the point that you really feel that nurses don't have a brain.This is relatively new (last few years), as when I started in the 70's a nurse would not call unless it was an emergency.
The aspect of call that really gets me comes from the nurses. I have recieved calls at 3 am from nurse indicating to me that Mr. X was constipated. When asked when for the last bm, it turns out that it was 24 hours previous. No GI distress, not acute abdomen. Just wanting an order for an enema. Similar calls constantly come in to the point that you really feel that nurses don't have a brain.This is relatively new (last few years), as when I started in the 70's a nurse would not call unless it was an emergency.
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