Both my patient's last week were both doctor's. One was a retired family practice doctor and the other was a nephrologist. Now, this is not my first time having taken care of patients who work in the health field, but it was the first time they got preferrential treatment from the staff (including MD's) for their profession.
I addressed both patients as Mr A and Mr B, while everyone else called them doctor. Now, that created some confusion for me because here I have people calling me to ask how Dr. so and so is doing or if Dr so and so has been extubated...Uh okay. Some of the nurses would go into their rooms and start by saying Mr and then catch themselves mid sentence and say " Oh I'm sorry Doctor." Anyway, at the end of the day if they felt the need to call them doctor that's their choice.
What really got on my nerve though was the fact that Mr/Dr A was basically writing his own orders. He demanded to be extubated, and even though he failed weaning he got extubated. During weaning one of the doctors told me to stand by him because he was going apneic for more than 30 seconds. So I told him to put him back on a rate until the sedation I had just turned off an hr ago wore off and the patient was more alert. So what does doctor do, he sits there watching. Mind you this is a busy place and the reason I could not do it was because I had to take Mr/Dr B to CT. So Dr. A gets extubated and then demands to have his NGT taken out (this is 1st day post op abd surgery), when they tell me not to he takes it out himself. Still lethargic he demands a PCA even though he spends most of the day sleeping, so of course he gets an order for 0.9 MS q10mins (they started at 0.5mg but increased everytime he asked them to). Two days later he is advanced to clears, but my doctor patient says "no, put me back as NPO I'm scared I'm going to vomit if I drink." That same daythey tell him he is getting transferred to the floor, and he refuses. He speaks to the atteding and tells him he feels he is not ready to leave the ICU (mind you this guy is stable from an ICU standpoint), so he now has orders to stay for another two days.
So to cut it all short, how do you guys feel about having doctor/patients. What is your experience? I'm all for having patients having an input on their care but I have to say I had a pretty heavy day with these two (I did not want to go into Mr B, but his wife (pharmacist) and daughters (MD) also made me feel like a glorified maid)
