What drives you crazy or hampers your work when it comes to doctors' behaviors? This certainly is not an urgent issue or one to dwell on, but I just thought it would be fun to hear your stories and vent a bit. Now, having said that, there actually can be things we run into on this topic that could be a serious issue not to be taken lightly. I'm just curious as to what your experiences are and how you deal with them. Here is one of mine:
Usually a surgeon...You walk into your patient's room to find their dressing taken down, wound exposed, a mess left on the bed or bedside table. The patient tells you, "oh yes, doctor so and so was just here. He said you'd take care of this.". No communication from Dr. So and so. No attempt to find you and let you know he is planning to check the wound so that you can be there and assist, Ask your questions on the care from there, if you have any, etc....No clear order on how he/she wants the wound dressed, etc...
Now before you all tell me what you would do, such as..."Well, call the doctor and ask him.". Duh....
Not the point. We all know what to do, just wanting to hear your situations. And if, they are serious concerns, as opposed to just annoyances, All the better.
2 things- When they take nearly all the charts on the floor and hide with them. When you find them and ask for your chart to do documentation they're like- I'm not done with it yet- then take the chart you wanted that they weren't even using- and open it and just look at stuff so you can't borrow it. And then when they leave all the charts all over the place and your shift turns into an Easter egg hunt .
2. When certain doctors- and every nurse knows which ones as soon as they start working- get super rude and mad that you called them about their patient. I get it if they're calling for dumb crap, but when you're calling because a surgeons patient (who wasn't on hospitalist service- ie, the patient was their responsibility alone) is a 21 year old >24hour open apply who had perfed badly before surgery is suddenly dropping his sats precipitously despite increasing his 02 and had previously been 100% room air who is now 85% on a non rebreather and is feeling "like they're going to die"- yeah, when I keep calling you for orders it's because your last crappy set didn't work and I'm not going to quit calling you when you hang up on Me AGAIN but I WILL cry because I'm scared for the patient and when another Surgeon sees me I will tell him the whole thing and this Surgeon will intervene and call the other guy himself- too bad it was already after a rapid response and the patient was headed to ICU now in a hospital where there aren't intensivists overnights -only on call- and the ER doc downstairs is tied up in 2 codes so the surgeon that saved the day incubated the patient and played intensivist until the real one could get there..... After that, the original surgeon got a bad reputation because even the other surgeons heard all about it and thought he was crap
Lmao that was such a specific example.... this happened 7 years ago and I'm still angry about it. As though nurses are idiots and you didn't know you'd have to be called in the night when you went through med school and residency....
Long story short- DON'T ACT LIKE YOU'RE DOING A NURSE A FAVOR WHEN YOU ANSWER THE PHONE
2 things- When they take nearly all the charts on the floor and hide with them. When you find them and ask for your chart to do documentation they're like- I'm not done with it yet- then take the chart you wanted that they weren't even using- and open it and just look at stuff so you can't borrow it. And then when they leave all the charts all over the place and your shift turns into an Easter egg hunt .
2. When certain doctors- and every nurse knows which ones as soon as they start working- get super rude and mad that you called them about their patient. I get it if they're calling for dumb crap, but when you're calling because a surgeons patient (who wasn't on hospitalist service- ie, the patient was their responsibility alone) is a 21 year old >24hour open apply who had perfed badly before surgery is suddenly dropping his sats precipitously despite increasing his 02 and had previously been 100% room air who is now 85% on a non rebreather and is feeling "like they're going to die"- yeah, when I keep calling you for orders it's because your last crappy set didn't work and I'm not going to quit calling you when you hang up on Me AGAIN but I WILL cry because I'm scared for the patient and when another Surgeon sees me I will tell him the whole thing and this Surgeon will intervene and call the other guy himself- too bad it was already after a rapid response and the patient was headed to ICU now in a hospital where there aren't intensivists overnights -only on call- and the ER doc downstairs is tied up in 2 codes so the surgeon that saved the day incubated the patient and played intensivist until the real one could get there..... After that, the original surgeon got a bad reputation because even the other surgeons heard all about it and thought he was crap
Lmao that was such a specific example.... this happened 7 years ago and I'm still angry about it. As though nurses are idiots and you didn't know you'd have to be called in the night when you went through med school and residency....
Long story short- DON'T ACT LIKE YOU'RE DOING A NURSE A FAVOR WHEN YOU ANSWER THE PHONE
Wow! That was actually traumatic for you as you watched that patient going down the tubes...
Had a similar situation where it was change of shift. Doctor's didn't like to be interrupted in hand-off, just as the nurses , BUT I had a true emergency. Non-rebreather mask, dropping SATs, LOC changing, etc...I could not get a doctor to answer several times...paged, direct dialed, etc..Was about to call a RRT when the charge nurse told me not to as she ran down the hall saying "I know where they are". I got all kinds of opinions on that one. You should have called the RRT right away. No you shouldn't call the RRT. In hindsight, I should have called it. Patient safety first.
My biggest pet peeve is lack of communication. I had a patient's wife frantically call me saying that her husband called and told her the doctor might be moving him to another hospital, that's the first I heard of it. I also had a surgeon come in and tell me to medicate my patient. Looked at me like I was rude or stupid when I had a confused look on my face because he just told me he wasn't in pain. He basically snapped his fingers at me to get the meds, NOW, without just saying he is gonna come back in an hour to change his dressing (he didn't show up for 6 hours after). My patient had to tell me why he needed to be medicated for the dressing change.
Wife is in room, I'm in with roommate. Dr. X comes in, says, tell the nurses to have me called anytime you need me. I'll answer right away.
So, wife calls out & she has a legitimate concern. I call Dr. X, he hangs up after screeching he's not on call. Ok....I call on call & they ask whof I'm calling about. Oh, Dr. X is covering that patient, so call him. I explained I already did....
Anyone who needs a stethoscope gets a yellow "isolation" stethoscope. We have a drawer of them for when different items get more use than others. We throw away BP cuffs that get icky for one reason or another. But we need nothing else out of the kit. Rest goes in a drawer.
PEDIATRICIANS who examine the newborns before 24 hours of age, as is required, but leave the baby unwrapped in the crib, no clothes and no blanket on them, just after we told the new parents babies get cold quickly, they don't have thermoregulation usually functioning fully in the first 24 hours, but the peds don't seem to care.
At some facilities where I've worked, physicians expected nurses to give up their seats at the nurses station so they could chart when they already had a nicely appointed dictation room (filled with snacks and bottled water) to do their charting.
I know right ! After all it is the Nurses station lol !
Wife is in room, I'm in with roommate. Dr. X comes in, says, tell the nurses to have me called anytime you need me. I'll answer right away.
So, wife calls out & she has a legitimate concern. I call Dr. X, he hangs up after screeching he's not on call. Ok....I call on call & they ask whof I'm calling about. Oh, Dr. X is covering that patient, so call him. I explained I already did....
I've had a similar situation...seems we all have a lot in common here.
To be perfectly honest, I don't have any pet peeves regarding the "generic" physician. I have had problems with individual coworkers (physicians, nurses, CNAs, physiotherapists, dietary staff etc.) but I tend to view them as exactly that, having differences of opinion on how we should treat each other or how things should be done with a specific individual.
When I worked in med-surg there was one surgeon who was infamous for doing this. He never even tried to locate the nurse responsible for the patient he was rounding and the patient's room usually looked like a 10 kiloton bomb had gone off in there Drove me slightly nuts to go into the room finding a patient idly scratching their surgical site with their none too clean fingers.
"Oh nurse I know I probably shouldn't, but it itches".
The funny thing was that despite the patient's room looking like a complete disaster area after the surgeon had rounded, he was known to be a perfectionist and a very gifted surgeon. I was a recent graduate and this was my first nursing job. I decided to ask him if I could attend one of his surgeries (a rather unsual operation scheduled for the next day) and he said I was welcome to. Turns out the guy loved to teach and I actually chose to come in early before evening shifts to watch another couple of his surgeries in the coming months.
Anyway, I told him about what I'd witnessed with his patients after he was done rounding and asked him if he didn't think it would be better if he'd let me know ahead of time so that I could round with him. That would also save me from having to chase him in the OR (which I noticed really annoyed him/broke his stride when I watched the surgeries) to get orders that he could have given me bedside at rounds. That was actually all it took, worked like magic :)
Emboldened by my recent success I decided to take it one step further When rounding with him (and yes, he came and fetched me beforehand) I used one of my feet to discreetly (ahem..) push a trashcan on wheels closer to him... and said with a wink that the trash will be going there eventually anyway... So why not... The guy actually had a sense of humor and lo and behold! he managed to deposit the old surgical dressings directly into the trashcan instead of as previously flinging them all around the room. Victory :)
I can understand why surgeons do this. At least on the floor that I worked they had a very short time to round multiple patients in the morning before starting the first surgery of the day. Most of them went through the floor like a whirlwind on amphetamine. I understand the stress. I think that talking to people will solve most problems though, and in this case I think that it was a win-win for us both.
This is amazing. Great way to work out an issue in a very non confrontational way. Also I've been dying to ask one of our neurosurgeons if I can watch one of his stereotactic resections and you've given me hope.
To be perfectly honest, I don't have any pet peeves regarding the "generic" physician. I have had problems with individual coworkers (physicians, nurses, CNAs, physiotherapists, dietary staff etc.) but I tend to view them as exactly that, having differences of opinion on how we should treat each other or how things should be done with a specific individual.
When I worked in med-surg there was one surgeon who was infamous for doing this. He never even tried to locate the nurse responsible for the patient he was rounding and the patient's room usually looked like a 10 kiloton bomb had gone off in there Drove me slightly nuts to go into the room finding a patient idly scratching their surgical site with their none too clean fingers.
"Oh nurse I know I probably shouldn't, but it itches".
The funny thing was that despite the patient's room looking like a complete disaster area after the surgeon had rounded, he was known to be a perfectionist and a very gifted surgeon. I was a recent graduate and this was my first nursing job. I decided to ask him if I could attend one of his surgeries (a rather unsual operation scheduled for the next day) and he said I was welcome to. Turns out the guy loved to teach and I actually chose to come in early before evening shifts to watch another couple of his surgeries in the coming months.
Anyway, I told him about what I'd witnessed with his patients after he was done rounding and asked him if he didn't think it would be better if he'd let me know ahead of time so that I could round with him. That would also save me from having to chase him in the OR (which I noticed really annoyed him/broke his stride when I watched the surgeries) to get orders that he could have given me bedside at rounds. That was actually all it took, worked like magic :)
Emboldened by my recent success I decided to take it one step further When rounding with him (and yes, he came and fetched me beforehand) I used one of my feet to discreetly (ahem..) push a trashcan on wheels closer to him... and said with a wink that the trash will be going there eventually anyway... So why not... The guy actually had a sense of humor and lo and behold! he managed to deposit the old surgical dressings directly into the trashcan instead of as previously flinging them all around the room. Victory :)
I can understand why surgeons do this. At least on the floor that I worked they had a very short time to round multiple patients in the morning before starting the first surgery of the day. Most of them went through the floor like a whirlwind on amphetamine. I understand the stress. I think that talking to people will solve most problems though, and in this case I think that it was a win-win for us both.
Apologies for quoting the whole post. I still haven't figured out how to quote a certain section.
To add to the part about finding us before rounding...That would solve a lot of wasted time. 1). We don't have to track them down later, interrupt them and so on for clarification. Would solve the discharge issues also.
2). We don't have the time to track them down either. We are just as time constrained as they are. It may save a mistake or miscommunication from us to the patient in the interim.
3). Saves us from saying to the patient, "I don't know. I'll have to call your doctor." who often assume we should know. Makes us look bad when that mistake happens when we are not updated in a timely manner.
Drove me slightly nuts to go into the room finding a patient idly scratching their surgical site with their none too clean fingers. 
When rounding with him (and yes, he came and fetched me beforehand) I used one of my feet to discreetly (ahem..) push a trashcan on wheels closer to him... and said with a wink that the trash will be going there eventually anyway... So why not... The guy actually had a sense of humor and lo and behold! he managed to deposit the old surgical dressings directly into the trashcan instead of as previously flinging them all around the room. Victory :)
PewpSmith
30 Posts
2 things- When they take nearly all the charts on the floor and hide with them. When you find them and ask for your chart to do documentation they're like- I'm not done with it yet- then take the chart you wanted that they weren't even using- and open it and just look at stuff so you can't borrow it. And then when they leave all the charts all over the place and your shift turns into an Easter egg hunt .
2. When certain doctors- and every nurse knows which ones as soon as they start working- get super rude and mad that you called them about their patient. I get it if they're calling for dumb crap, but when you're calling because a surgeons patient (who wasn't on hospitalist service- ie, the patient was their responsibility alone) is a 21 year old >24hour open apply who had perfed badly before surgery is suddenly dropping his sats precipitously despite increasing his 02 and had previously been 100% room air who is now 85% on a non rebreather and is feeling "like they're going to die"- yeah, when I keep calling you for orders it's because your last crappy set didn't work and I'm not going to quit calling you when you hang up on Me AGAIN but I WILL cry because I'm scared for the patient and when another Surgeon sees me I will tell him the whole thing and this Surgeon will intervene and call the other guy himself- too bad it was already after a rapid response and the patient was headed to ICU now in a hospital where there aren't intensivists overnights -only on call- and the ER doc downstairs is tied up in 2 codes so the surgeon that saved the day incubated the patient and played intensivist until the real one could get there..... After that, the original surgeon got a bad reputation because even the other surgeons heard all about it and thought he was crap
Lmao that was such a specific example.... this happened 7 years ago and I'm still angry about it. As though nurses are idiots and you didn't know you'd have to be called in the night when you went through med school and residency....
Long story short- DON'T ACT LIKE YOU'RE DOING A NURSE A FAVOR WHEN YOU ANSWER THE PHONE