Department full. 2 new patients arrive with families in tow.
#1 SOB with cold symptoms X 1 wk, fed up with being sick. History of Asthma. No Acute Resp. distress. No coughing. Lungs clear per auscultation. Vitals Normal with respers 16/min, P 60, skin W/D. Sats 96% Triage decision Urgent because protocol says all patients with c/o SOB should be urgent. She could have been nonurgent. pt waited 20minutes in the waiting room.
Doctor couldn't wait 5 more minutes for me to DC my other patient and clean the room quick. Instead of waiting 5 min for me to place the pt in a room, He goes back to the waiting room, proceded to examine and interview patient #1 in front of everyone in the waiting room. I feel this was totally inappropriate. A TOTAL violation of privacy for the patient. And made our department look sloppy and unprofessional. A doctor should never ever do that unless a patient is going down the tubes in the waiting room. This is not the first time he's done this. And we are all complaining to our manager.
Oooohhhh!!! It chaps my butt when people c/o CP or SOB because they know it will get them back more quickly; another one is the women who c/o abd. pain/pelvic pain and all they really want is a pregnancy test...they know if they c/o pain they won't have to wait as long.
Some of our ED docs get antsy and bring people back before we're ready for them; thenthey get mad because there's no nurse assigned to the pt. Hellooooo...if you'd give the charge nurse 5 mins maybe this wouldn't be a problem!!
while i am not here to argue with you, because i do agree with you on the doc going out there.......the privacy issue doesn't hold water.
does being in a hallway on a gurney allow privacy? nope...but it happens everywhere. why? er's in this country have become overinundated with the demand for healthcare. the sick, the lame and the people using it in place of the pmds office.
as far as the joint commision goes? there is not an er i haven't been in or seen, that does not list all the patients last names, and complaint on a big ole dry erase board. this board is usually visible to every person with eyesight also. i know as a fact that breaches the joint commision's policies, regarding patient confidentiality.
i'm not being difficult, but this doesn"t happen everywhere. it was completely inappropriate to question a patient in the wr. just because lots of er's do things a certain way, doesn't make it right. the privacy issue would carry weight and does all the time.
i'm not saying i work in a perfect er, but we don't use dry erase boards, pts. names are not visible to others and we don't question pts. in front of the entire wr. unlike many er's we have rooms with doors, a computer system only accessible with a password, and we don't sit people on guerneys in the hallway. we're not some backwoods er either, we're a level 1 trauma center. luckily, our drs. are educated enough not to break confidentiality by questioning in the wr.
i don't know this dr. or the situation, so i'm not the judge and jury, but a more appropriate way of handling it would have been for him to take you aside and make his case as to why he felt this patient had an emergent condition that needed immediate attention. sounds like he has some communication issues.
fab4fan
1,173 Posts
Oooohhhh!!! It chaps my butt when people c/o CP or SOB because they know it will get them back more quickly; another one is the women who c/o abd. pain/pelvic pain and all they really want is a pregnancy test...they know if they c/o pain they won't have to wait as long.
Some of our ED docs get antsy and bring people back before we're ready for them; thenthey get mad because there's no nurse assigned to the pt. Hellooooo...if you'd give the charge nurse 5 mins maybe this wouldn't be a problem!!