Dr. placing added stress on nursing staff

[JonBobby]

Hi all,

I am new to this site and have a question to ask. I have a been an RN on a telemetry unit for 8 months now and work in a hospital in southern california. i have noticed a certain doctor who is a general physician that admits patients and places consults for multiple (4+) specialists, even if not needed. Then writes orders to have the RN call the consults to retrieve orders for that patient, or ask the consult to call another dr to be consulted. At one time the nurse was told to call a consult just to call him on his cell. Just recently a nurse was told to call 5 doctors to get discharge instructions from all of them, and that task alone took the nurse 3 or more hours to complete. This dr has been fired from several hospitals, for reasons unknown to me, and our hospital is the only one that still allows him to practice. So my question is what are the responsibilities of the dr when it comes to consults, and is what he doing legal? he causes so much stress on the staff that anyone taking care of a patient he admitted is terrified.

Sorry for such a large post, and thank you for any responses.

[OCRN3]

At my facility if a dr. Write consult on the orders we usually ignore it because it is supposed to be dr. To dr. Consult. Sometimes if the doctors ask nicely we will do it for them. Policy says that we r not supposed to do that though.

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[classicdame, MSN, EdD]

Agree with OCRN3. It is the job of Dr. #1 to get consults from other MDs and it is the consulting docs job to get any orders done. Someone needs to talk to CFO to let them know how nurses are being used as private secretary to Dr#1

[Tait, MSN, RN]

Check policy but my hospital required all consults to be MD to MD.

[Do-over, ASN, RN]

We notify the consults that are ordered by the admitting doc, for the most part. Life here in the sticks may be a bit different that at the Bigs.

I don't know what I'd do with myself if more docs talked amongst themselves...

[JB2007, ASN, RN]

It is the same around this area as well. The admitting Dr puts orders in for the consult and it is the nurses job to call the consulting Dr. The admitting Dr usually does not even talk to the Dr that he wants consulted so the nurse better know why the Dr wants the consult.

[SaoirseRN]

Our doctors will write on the orders "Consult Dr. X", so we know Dr. X will be involved in the patient's care, however, the physician him/herself will actually contact Dr. X.

[JonBobby]

Thank you all for the quick replies. I will check with my higher ups to specify exactly our role.

[psu_213, BSN, RN]

It is the same around this area as well. The admitting Dr puts orders in for the consult and it is the nurses job to call the consulting Dr. The admitting Dr usually does not even talk to the Dr that he wants consulted so the nurse better know why the Dr wants the consult.

It was similar where I worked. The doc would write "consult Dr. Jones re: A fib." The secretary or the nurse would enter the consult in the computer and call Dr. Jones's service to alert them that he had a new consult. It would be either a "routine" consult (i.e. Dr. Jones did not have to be paged, he would just see the pt next time he was in the hospital) or an "emergency" consult (Dr. Jones would be paged, he should call back, and would, presumably, give orders). The nurse is not the "go between" for future conversations between the attending and the consult, but the nurse would make the initial contact.