Phone, cell, beeper and texting.

[imintrouble]

Nurses are texting MDs. Cell phones instead of home phones. Beepers are obsolete.

What's the world coming to?

Change comes slowly to my area of the country. Texting for orders instead of talking, is slowly making its way to my hospital. Apparently it happens more often than I thought.

The last 4 new MDs to the area only provide cell numbers. No home phone or beeper. We have to leave voice messages when the cell is not answered.

The old MDs still answer their home phones after office hours, day and night. We also page them, and for the most part you can expect a return call within 15 minutes. They don't know if I'm calling for an MI, or for Zofran for nausea. There is no hierarchy of needs. There's no screen. I call, they answer.

I don't want to appear resistant to change. However, it feels wrong to leave personal pt info on voice mail. Then the new MDs basically screen the calls, because sometimes they call back and sometimes they don't. Is this the way bigger facilities' nurses contact MDs? How many times do you call the cell and leave a message?

Larger hospitals in the area have hospitalists around the clock, and the middle of the night phone calls to PCPs are a thing of the past. We'll probably get the hospitalist program too, but as in all things, a little later than everybody else.

What do the rest of you do when you need orders from an MD?

Do you think it's inappropriate to leave personal pt info on a cell phone voice mail?

Is it harmless, a sign of the times, and I just need to get with the program?

[Esme12, ASN, BSN, RN]

Texting can be a form of communication between nurses and MDs, it is an accepted way of giving and receiving orders. Although it can have its limitations but people still use them.

They may still use them .....but that doesn't make it right. Be extremely cautious for if something happens to cause a deleterious outcome on a patient on a texted order....you will be vulnerable for the present laws do not advocate this as an acceptable practice.

Just because your facility might have it as a policy and it is common practice .....will not protect you when your are being questioned about a bad outcome and why it happened.

[tewdles, RN]

And again, be very very careful about texting patient identifiers when you are giving MDs info in the text. IT IS NOT SECURE if you are just using a plain ol cell phone.

[Racer15, BSN, RN]

One of our cardiologists demands that you take a picture of patient EKGs and send them to him via text before he comes to the hospital when he is on call. Most of the nurses I work with are fine with it, but I am iffy. Not the same thing exactly, but I work in ED land, where I have a physician to bug in the flesh 24/7.

[tamadrummer]

Most of the MDs around here use an answering service after hours. You leave a message and they page the MD.

Anything else seems kind of alien to me. All 3 of the facilities I have worked in have operated in the same fashion. Call the answering service and tell them whether you need, "orders, results, or condition" and stat or routine call.

One physician, actually an intensivist/pulmonologist has given out his cell number so it is really fast to get him on the phone and get orders. If not careful it can be abused but he is not the kind of doctor that screams and shouts at people. If I were ever to be sick, he is the doctor I would want on my case!