Oh those doctors....they drive a nurse crazy. On one end of the spectrum you have the over-ordering idiot and on the other end you have the doctor who dismisses people.
What do nurses do when a older patient comes in and has symptoms but the doctor decides they don't need to be worked up at all? The patient is unhappy, feeling like they have been dimissed or been treated in a condescending way. They go on at length about it. They feel bad. They feel foolish for coming at all. But they were worried. Should they have been worked up? Hell if I know. All I know is that I am in the middle of all this shit having to listen to them complain about the doctor.
I'm supposed to be the patient advocate and all that shit. I end up telling the doctor that the patient is unhappy with them. This is a doctor I consider to be a bad doctor. They DO dismiss people. They ARE condescending. I avoid them. I have as little contact with them as possible. They are an accident waiting to happen.
What happened? Doctor ordered a few blood tests. Patient ended up going home.
Like I have said many a time in this blog, it is just plain idiotic that medical practice varies so much from doctor to doctor. When someone comes in with chest pain, they are treated pretty much the same no matter who they are. At least at my hospital. So are strokes. Why doesn't that happen across the spectrum of ER medicine allowing some deviation for individual histories and circumstances? I just don't buy the whole liability thing anymore. There is a whole more to it than that. And I don't give a shit about patient complaints either. It shouldn't drive care.
All of this is an example of why our health care system is going to implode on itself. They current plans to change health care will do nothing. If anything, they will worsen the situation and speed up the collapse of health care. Universal health care is coming and it can't be any worse than the current state of medicine.
3 comments:
Give them the patient rep card, document that you discussed the concerns of the patient with the physician, tell them they can come back at any time if their condition worsens/doesn't improve, make sure they have some doctor to follow up with, and be done with it unless the patient really is sick whereby you have to do shit like page the medical director or whatever.
Thank you for caring...
Classof65
Health care in general may or may not be worse with universal health care.
What will likely be worse is individual choice and the coming 50% federal income tax rate to pay for it all.
Gotta love progress.
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