I was hoping for some advice from my fellow ED nurses...
In my ER the policy is that nurses do not give out medical advice over the phone.
However, we get a lot of calls from people who claim to be asking for medical information, not advice. Sometimes instead of calling on the phone people actually just come in and ask questions of the triage nurse.
For example,
"What are the symptoms of . . . ?"(fill in the blank with the disease du jour)
or
"Does this medication interact with this medication?" or "What are the side effects of this medication?" (we do not have a 24-hour pharmacy in my community, and I'm not talking about meds we prescribed them)
Do any of you have a good way of handling these types of questions? Some people are very manipulative and persistent.
Actually our staff are supposed to refer the "advice" calls to a nurse, which is a waste of time but occasionally we have gotten calls in which the person did need actual basic emergency advice -- such as "my friend swallowed a whole bunch of pills and drank ETOH and now she won't wake up" (call 911 right now, duh) or "my baby is 2 weeks old and he has a fever" (newborn w/ fever needs to be seen ASAP). Apparently the unlicensed personnel in our dept who got these 2 calls provided the generic "we can't give advice" response. The manager overheard and now all requests for advice are supposed to go to a nurse, unless none of us can come to the phone. So more fun for us RNs.
Haha if they dont get it after the first 3 times I tell them NO I put them on hold until they hang up.
Guy called 2 days ago re: treatment for gonnorhea LOL
this lady once called because she read an article about someone putting something in peanutbutter and now shes itchy
people call 3 in the morning because they want to give their 120lbs 8yr old medication their pediatrician prescribed but have a question about the doseage
i ......cant..... give..... you...... any...... information..... sorry
::hold for 15 minutes::
ER are you being helped? "Yes im holding for information on.."
sfsn
65 Posts
Actually our staff are supposed to refer the "advice" calls to a nurse, which is a waste of time but occasionally we have gotten calls in which the person did need actual basic emergency advice -- such as "my friend swallowed a whole bunch of pills and drank ETOH and now she won't wake up" (call 911 right now, duh) or "my baby is 2 weeks old and he has a fever" (newborn w/ fever needs to be seen ASAP). Apparently the unlicensed personnel in our dept who got these 2 calls provided the generic "we can't give advice" response. The manager overheard and now all requests for advice are supposed to go to a nurse, unless none of us can come to the phone. So more fun for us RNs.