Comments on: How teamwork is essential in the emergency department

By: Nurse K

Nurse K — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 18:15:35 +0000

I like the added touch of surgical airway equipment at the bedside. Who’s gonna use that equipment….the ICU RN? No offense, but I’d have maybe said something if a lisinopril tongue patient couldn’t speak and no one was ballsy enough to secure the airway prior to transport to the ICU.

By: stargirl65

stargirl65 — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 13:24:57 +0000

Then there are the times the specialist thinks the primary care doctor get to do their scut.

Example 1: ENT takes tonsils out of patient, patient cannot drink and is dehydrated, ENT tell the patient to call her primary care doctor to care for her.

Example 2: Specialist goes out of town. Has a partner. Instructs his staff to tell patients that need medicine refills (for medicines specialist prescribed) to call primary care doctor for said refills.

Example 3: Patient sees cardiology after having stent placed in heart. Patient calls cardiology office with chest pain. They are busy and advise patient to call primary doctor to manage chest pain

I could go on ad infinitum.

I will see them all. We keep open appointments and sometimes they are just double booked. But inevitably I end up calling the specialist anyway for these problems that they should have managed.

By: Frank2941

Frank2941 — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 04:01:05 +0000

I would like to hear how this incident was resolved.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 03:58:34 +0000

Calling the specialists here was appropriate. But when ED docs call specialists to ‘cya’ and think of them no more than a lab test, then it really gets annoying OR when they are busy and call you to do all their scut work….