Frustrations

[Doc Samson]

Hi Folks,

I am a consultation psychiatrist that has been invited by an anesthesiology journal to write an article about techniques to optimize communication and minimize conflict when performing consultations. I'm hoping that you all could provide me with some common frustrations that you face when you are consulted by other services outside of the OR (I'm assuming that this would be mostly for pain management, but if I'm wrong, please educate me).

Any help you can provide would be greatly appreciated. Feel free to vent.

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[epidural man]

Feel free to vent.

Gladly......

For some reason when we would get consulted for pain, it would come through the nurse, or not at all, and then you would get a call from the team the next day saying "HEY, we put a consult in the computer. Are you ever going to come see this guy?!"

I never understood why a physician to a physician call didn't apply to the pain service.

Also, in our hospital, we get consulted all the time for IV placement. Again, it would piss me off when the nurse would call and not the physician. A consult is a physician to physician conversation.

 

[Doc Samson]

Gladly......

For some reason when we would get consulted for pain, it would come through the nurse, or not at all, and then you would get a call from the team the next day saying "HEY, we put a consult in the computer. Are you ever going to come see this guy?!"

I never understood why a physician to a physician call didn't apply to the pain service.

Also, in our hospital, we get consulted all the time for IV placement. Again, it would piss me off when the nurse would call and not the physician. A consult is a physician to physician conversation.

Always important to call your consultant 1:1 to make the purpose of the consultation clear (I imagine "consult for pain management" is just as nebulously frustrating as "consult for psych issues").

Any anesthesiology specific problems... you tell them to do X with the opiates, but they always do Y; you ask for Q labs, but they get R labs instead?