When No One Wants To See The Patient: The ER’s On-Call Labyrinth
The call schedule is hidden somewhere inside!
Dictation:
‘The patient was seen in the emergency department by Dr. Niemans, who is the acting hospitalist on call for Dr. Whitman’s group, who usually admit for the patient’s actual primary care provider, Emily Knight, PA, who works for Dr. Robelo, who no longer takes call, but admits his patients to the hospitalist.
Because the patient has COPD and an acute left-lower-lobe pneumonia, pulmonology was consulted. However, no pulmonologist is available this weekend. Pulmonary is being covered by Dr. Albertson, pulmonologist in the neighboring city. I spoke with Dr. Albertson about this and he told me he wasn’t taking call for our patients, and why did people keep bothering him.
The patient’s cardiologist, Dr. Rease, is being covered by Dr. James. I spoke to Edgar, PA for Dr. James who said that as of 7am, Dr. James was trading call with Dr. Housefield while Dr. James went to his son’s soccer game, but if I had any questions I should call Dr. Housefield’s Nurse Practitioner Michael, who would be rounding for Dr. Housefield, Dr. James and Dr. Josefson, at least until soccer was over or something bad happened.
The patient thought he would be seen by his primary physician and signed out AMA.’
Dr. Leap was tired; for he spent more time and energy dictating the names of physicians than actually caring for the patient.
*This blog post was originally published at edwinleap.com*
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