Tired Doctor Rant
So you wanna know how my day went? I'll tell you how my day went:
I get a 7:30 am page from the doctor on-call that one of my patients had presented to the ER at 2 a.m. with a seizure, and his wife was throwing fits because a) she didn't like the hospital and b) he was too agitated to get into the CT scanner, and "how are we going to know what's going on if we can't scan him?"
There was nothing I could do about the hospital; it's flu season and the guy's contracted hospital (let's call it Big Tertiary Hospital) was closed to ambulance patients. It's full, not a bed available. So we had to keep him at Community Hospital. I tried to reassure the wife that Community Hospital was, indeed, conversant with 21st century medicine and that they would not try to trephine him to let the evil spirits out of his head.
So I call the hospitalist (I also had to explain to the wife that we have a hospitalist who sees our patients) but, being a busy guy, it takes several hours for him to get over there, during which time the wife calls me AGAIN. He's still in restraints but his vitals are stable, etc. so I keep trying to reassure her that he's being observed in the ER and things are OK.
Now, this guy has some medical problems. He has vascular disease and diabetes; it's possible he could have had a stroke. So I understand the wife's concern, it's just that there really is nothing different to be done. If the patient is too unstable (or agitated) to scan, he's too unstable to scan, and that's it.
Finally the hospitalist gets there and proceeds to tell me that the patient is a boozer and had had about eight beers with his brother the previous weekend! (He'd denied heavy alcohol use to me, and his liver function tests were OK when I'd done a checkup on him.) Oh, and he had a urine test which was positive for marijuana, too. And he was threatening to walk out against medical advice. Fortunately, he waited till his wife showed up at the hospital to leave.
So that's how Mr. Party Boy ruined my ENTIRE DAY. Hmmmph.
posted by Dr. Alice at #
