Do your Doctors require BLS?

[susummers1]

Recently this topic has come up at my facility. Our providers are not required to keep their BLS, it's not even a requirement for the job. Our specialists (hospitalist, trauma surgeons, mostly inpatient) are required to have ACLS, ATLS etc. But our clinic doc aren't required to have anything. So my question is what is required at your facilities? Doesn't this seem unsafe. Do the clinic doctors panic and call their nursing staff who are required to have BLS?

[klone, MSN, RN]

It varies and is dependent upon the facility requirement. If a doc is in private practice, it's up to him/her as the practice owner. If they are employed by an organization, it's up to the organization.

[RiskManager]

In my outpatient clinics, all physicians, non-physician providers and all RN's are required to have BLS. Depending on specialty, some of them go on to ACLS and neonatal resuscitation, but that is really more for the hospital setting. It is difficult to keep up ACLS and neonatal only for outpatient, since they are perishable skills, and you so rarely use them in the outpatient setting. We don't even stock our crash carts for full ACLS, and we switched to automatic defibrillators.

[ottersloveoysters]

Our outpatient docs have BLS but to really answer your question, if there is an emergency, they yell/run for a nurse.