How much longer is this going to go on?

[oramar]

Today I saw the charge nurse and the unit secretary repeatedly putting their heads together to try and decipher doctors orders. I could not help but wonder at the zillions of hours that have been wasted to this time consuming activity. Here I am at a facility that is completely computerized except for one thing, the docs still hand write orders. This is a disgrace because it has been known for years that doctor handwritting is number one on the list of causes of med errors. Personally I have seen the doctors resist computers more than any other profession. They all have pass words but most of them want the labs put in their hands or someone to look it up for them. Just venting because I took 2 years off and I come back to the same old thing.

[deespoohbear]

I have the same policy as psnurse. I just call or page them. I don't even mess around with it anymore. I work for a small hospital with not many docs, so it is fairly easy to track down the guility party. I am not going to be liable for some med error or another error just because I can't read the doc's orders. We actually have a couple of docs whose handwriting is very legible. I can see a couple of docs at our facility just having royal tizzies if we went to a system where the orders were entered in the computer. Talk about teaching an old dog new tricks!!!

[P_RN, ADN, RN]

I worked in a big teaching hospital associated with the medical school. It was also Level I trauma center.

There were 34 orthopods, between 8-10 ortho residents; there were trauma residents and their attendings; anaesthesia residents and their attendings; there were med students who did not always sign the orders as M III ....you couldn't carry them out til the MD/DO cosigned.

There were internists...private and staff and their residents. It would not be unusual at all for 15-20 different folks to access the chart on any given day.....

MY solution would be to call the chief ortho resident and let him/her handle the ortho residents......

The TRAUMA surgeon* would handle his puppies no question, and then we tried our best to figure what else to do with the rest.

* If I were to be in a trauma I always said I'd name this guy as THE one to see me.....he is AWESOME......

I even have a sticker on the back of my driver's license naming the hospital, surgeon, internist and ortho I want.......

[psnurse]

I love the sticker on the back of the drivers license idea.

My colleagues and I have kicked around the idea of having a tatoo of MD's not allowed to touch us placed on our chest. This sounds much easier and less painful. Easier to revise if you move, ect.