Doctors who continue to do this are akin to gamblers.
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If am MD has had a long term professional relationship, it may be OK to Dx and Tx the patient over the phone for minor illness. I have little or no problem with that.
I do have a major worry when it comes to RNs who Rx meds, based on symptoms detailed to them over the phone.
When did RNs earn the right to diagnose and then prescribe for various disorders?
Do these RNs realize the potential dangers of their actions?
RNs are not licensed to diagnose or treat.
Where I work, there are a few routine, low risk conditions that allow us to request telephone treatment for medicine, which is reviewed & signed off by a physician. Things like a nasal spray for hay fever. Patients expect the convenience. I don’t work in the physician’s office, but in a call center, where the patient calls a central number and we act as a front office. The same type of thing occurs in private physician offices everywhere. Nurses or MAs gather data, communicate it to a physician who writes the prescription. In the system I work in, all of the patients records are right in front of us on computer, as opposed to doctors offices where they employ a separate person to pull a chart, which gets routed to the doctor’s inbox, where it will sit until the physician gets a spare moment.
Most physicians prefer an office visit. There are more times than not that the patient refuses to be evaluated for a routine problem and insist on a message to the doctor instead for a call back.
“RNs are not licensed to diagnose or treat. “
But do they know this??
The phone RNs Dx a patient via either a checklist or via computer software. Sight unseen, the RN makes a Dx
( UTI ) that sounds (!) right and then from the checklist of drugs ( formulary) Rx a med.
Everything runs smoothly till the RN has a pharmacist
as a patient and then the great awakening occurs.
Medical Economics had a great article about this http://www.memag.com/memag/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=379588&searchString=older%20doctors%20and%20telephone%20medicine
But the whole time I read it I kept thinking “What if this person on the other end of the phone doesnt have IBS , but has Crohn’s disease”?
Gentlemen, renew your malpractice!
No surprise the HMO’s are pushing it. They won’t lose their license or go to jail and they save money. Its win-win.
Yes, I would be very careful when doctors want to ‘call in’ a prescription over the phone. I was prescibed penicillian over the phone and now I sit here covered in hives. Now I read that I should have been given a skin test–at least that! I didn’t know I was allergic. So be careful. What I have is minor, but it could have been worse; a lot worse.
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