LMFAO girl I hear you Alicia, from reading your posts I saw that you are relatively new to the profession. You have hit the tip of the iceberg. The majority of your job is going to involved wading through the BS and pulling all the strings to get the patient what they need. That is why we have nurses. Doctors diagnose an illness, and prescribe a course of treatment and walk off the ward. The nurse implements, moniters, and pulls it all together by fighting the system and making the impossible happen. Loads of responsibilty and absolutely no control.
Your post reminded me of what happens on my ward when patients are discharged.
0900. Consultant comes on the ward for rounds and tells the patients he is all good and can be discharged. Then consultant walks away and is out of the picture.
A nurse cannot let a patient go until a doctor writes up a discharge letter, and prescribes his TTO's. I would get fired if I let him go before this. TTO's are the months supply of drugs patient goes home with. The doctor must write this up. The nurse has to get this write up to the pharmacy and get it dispensed.
Consultant walks off the ward. It is the junior doctors job to write discharge letter and TTO's. Consultant will NOT release the junior doctor from rounds until 4 PM to write the discharge letter and TTO's. Pharmacy closes at 5PM. Consultant doesn't tell patient this. He says "you can go home", and he walks off the ward.
1000 AM Patient is dressed and ready to go and is pissed at me because I have told him he has got to hang on for his discharge paperwork and drugs.
I bleep the junior doctor and tell him that the patient wants to go NOW. Junior Doctor tells me to "F*ck off" because he is on rounds, says he will get there at 5 PM. I tell him that the pharmacy will close at 5PM. He tells me to "f*ck off" because he has sick people to see and hangs up.
4PM. I bleep the junior doctor again, to remind him to get his ars* down to the ward and do patients discharge paperwork so I can get it to the pharmacy before they close. Meanwhile patient has been following me around all day, asking when he can go, and is calling me some nice names.
4:50 PM Junior doctor shows up to write discharge orders. Curses me out for being a pain in the ars*. But if we nurses don't keep on them they don't come in time for the pharmacy closing, sometimes they may forget all together. They have multiple patients on multiple wards.
4:52. I get to pharmacy, out of breath from running. They give me hell for "waiting until they are about to close" to get them the discharge orders. They want to refuse to do it until the next day. I beg.
5:05. I give patient his meds and discharge paperwork, and discharge him. He spends 20 minutes telling me how worthless I am for making him sit there and wait since 0900 AM. He said "The consultant had the courtesy to be there at 0900 and me I could go and I sat here all day because the nurses cannot get their act together."
This is all happening while I am trying to pull it all together for 20 other sick people, wading for similiar kinds of BS to get them the things they need.
But I have left nursing for good so I won't have to do this for 15 hours a day anymore!! Yippeeeeeeee
