bringing spouse to call room?

[drox]

Is it legal to bring your spouse to the call room on night shift?

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[Winged Scapula]

"Legal"? Sure. There are no laws against it (although there may be individual hospital policies against it; only your program can tell you that).

Adviseable? No.

If you want your spouse to come by and have dinner with you in the hospital cafeteria, that's fine and commonly done. But spending the night with you in the call room? You will find this habit annoys, embarrasses and makes your colleagues uncomfortable. There is also the issue of potential privacy violations as he/she will be privy to patient care issues that are none of their business.

 

[colbgw02]

Legal? I think that's probably beside the point.

Is this a shared call room? Is it used for other purposes - as in, is there a table where people might eat or is it used for socializing?

Assuming you're referring to having your spouse share your call bed with you overnight, then that's a bad idea irrespective of the specifics. How big of a deal it turns out to be probably hinges on the details.

Bottom line, just don't do this.

 

[drox]

actually its a private call room. no other residents are around. Its just a room with one bed

 

[colbgw02]

Then you could probably "get away" with it, but that still doesn't mean it's a good idea.

Understand that this can be used against you the instant that anything else goes wrong. Didn't return a page in time? Senior resident/attending couldn't find you? Start to fall behind your peers? Oh, did you know that drox has his spouse spend the night with him/her on call? Well, that explains everything. Be prepared to become your PD's personal pet project.

 

[Winged Scapula]

actually its a private call room. no other residents are around. Its just a room with one bed

I would still say don't do it.

If you were working at any other job, would you bring your spouse with you? Of course not.

You're there to do a job. He/she will be left alone in the call room while you are seeing patients. You may be tempted to take care of things without going and seeing the patient because of some obligation to the spouse. There are patient information/privacy issues as well. I suspect it will be against policy as well which is going to open you up for all sorts of accusations if you miss something, something goes wrong while you're on call.

Sounds foolish to me.

 

[Promethean]

Is it legal to bring your spouse to the call room on night shift?

Just don't. Really.

If they are also already a resident there, maybe, maybe it might be overlooked, but it would still not be a great idea.

A call room is a courtesy provided by the hospital for residents so that they can maybe get some rest on long shifts. It is not a hotel room nor a conjugal visit suite. I'd be stunned if there isn't an explicit rule against it somewhere in some dusty policy manual that no one has read since it was drafted... but even if not, I think you will find your program director, other residents who have to use that room later, and anyone associated with hospital administration would object. Don't be the reason for a previously non-existent rule to be drafted.

 

[colbgw02]

If your program doesn't already have a policy about this, then you'll be the reason they develop one. A decade from now, people will look in their handbook and wonder why such a rule exists because they'll be blown away someone would have thought to do this. Don't be the person behind the we-wouldn't-have-a-policy-about-it-unless-someone-had-done-it adage.

 

[Winged Scapula]

Hospitals are very small places as well.

Even if you took care to be discreet with your spouse, someone will find out. Nurses sometimes come to the call room to get you if they think its faster. Our PD knew the code to our call room and would randomly walk in. Worse case scenario: you miss a page and get caught in flagrante delicto, patient suffers. Best case: people gossiping and wondering if you are serious about your job.

 

[IlDestriero]

You don't bring your wife to the call room, you bring nurses and techs to the call room. What's wrong with you?

 

[SouthernSurgeon]

You don't bring your wife to the call room, you bring nurses and techs to the call room. What's wrong with you?

You beat me to it!

 

[Winged Scapula]

You don't bring your wife to the call room, you bring nurses and techs to the call room. What's wrong with you?

 

[SouthernSurgeon]

I don't have much to add to all the excellent points above, except this:

Why on earth would you do this to your poor spouse? Instead of getting a good night's sleep at home they have to share a twin bed with you in the hospital, with crummy sheets of questionable cleanliness, getting woken up constantly by your pager going off.

My suggestion would be to focus on the time you get together outside of the hospital. Even if it is limited in quantity, maximize the quality of that time together.

 

[Psyche Estrelle]

OK everyone, relax, (making a huge assumption that OP is male and married to a woman) he didn't say he was planning on having sex with his spouse, just bringing her to the call room. At my residency if things were light, our spouses frequently brought the floats food and we'd all relax on the call room floor and eat/chat.

Frequently there is a statement in the resident handbook expressly forbidding this practice. My advice would be, if you do it (and I have no doubt that there are people on here that have, despite the comments above), keep it on the DL. Forever.

 

[Trauma Surgeon]

Out of curiosity, what speciality are you in since it seems you have time to spend in the call room? I'm happy if I get 2h in the call room (even though it will be interrupted with pages and phone calls). Also you must have pretty nice call rooms, my wife wouldn't spend a minute in our call rooms when she can sleep uninterrupted in our comfortable and clean bed at home. Maybe you want to punish her

As WS pointed out, there might be a violation of patient privacy since you will be discussing patient related matters. So my advice (with reservation that I'm based in Europe), don't or do it "black ops style".

 

[colbgw02]

People's responses have appropriately contained caveats about this not being about stopping by or about having dinner together, which is clearly above board, but rather about "spending the night". However one chooses to interrupt that (with or without sex), it's not a good idea.

 

[SouthernSurgeon]

Out of curiosity, what speciality are you in since it seems you have time to spend in the call room? I'm happy if I get 2h in the call room (even though it will be interrupted with pages and phone calls). Also you must have pretty nice call rooms, my wife wouldn't spend a minute in our call rooms when she can sleep uninterrupted in our comfortable and clean bed at home. Maybe you want to punish her

As WS pointed out, there might be a violation of patient privacy since you will be discussing patient related matters. So my advice (with reservation that I'm based in Europe), don't or do it "black ops style".

I'm a general surgery resident.

It was not infrequent intern year to get a solid few hours sleep.

Sure there were lots of crazy nights where the pager was going off nonstop. But on an inpatient service (i.e. not seeing traumas or new consults), taking care of postops, I had plenty of nights where I tucked my patients in at 11-12, then tucked myself in immediately after and woke up hours later.

 

[oldbearprofessor]

Okay, some of this is a bit generational. 30 years or so ago, when we did every third night for 3 years as a resident staying until 6 pm post-call (i.e. it was a residency), if you had your own call room, this wasn't unheard of. Wasn't talked about, but wasn't rare either, although I think staying all night was very uncommon. Nowadays, attitudes have changed and it probably is a bad idea.

Not sure about the privacy violation part though. This is a bit complicated. After all, whenever I (today) get called at home, I don't force everyone out of earshot to answer questions from residents/fellows about patients. Heck, my (non-medical) wife used to joke that she could pick up the phone at night and say "get a chest X-ray and blood gas and call me back" as well as I could. Obviously it's inappropriate to discuss patient care details with ones family, but I'm not sure that the wall is such that everytime we get a patient care related call we have to force everyone we know out of the room in our own house.

 

[Perrotfish]

Out of curiosity, what speciality are you in since it seems you have time to spend in the call room? I'm happy if I get 2h in the call room (even though it will be interrupted with pages and phone calls). Also you must have pretty nice call rooms, my wife wouldn't spend a minute in our call rooms when she can sleep uninterrupted in our comfortable and clean bed at home. Maybe you want to punish her

I think a lot of call rooms just got a lot nicer. When the Interns couldn't take call any more a lot of Inter/resident bunk bed set ups got turned into singles. Also since a lot of places are now only doing call for the night float senior's day off the room is only used weekly, so it stays pretty clean.

 

[Promethean]

You don't bring your wife to the call room, you bring nurses and techs to the call room. What's wrong with you?

So, I haven't heard of any doctor / tech liasons in our call rooms. A couple doctor / OR nurse rumors, but nothing confirmed. We have had a few incidents of nurse/tech or tech/tech rumors that were 100% believable based on the individuals involved. Mostly involving the same few scuzzy people. But the one that took the cake....

A nurse was fired from our hospital over the relationship that had gone on between the nurse and a patient's family member. They didn't get busted for going into the call room, though security video of that did cement the case against them. They were caught in a "compromising position" IN THE PATIENT'S ROOM! Somehow, nurse retained license, has gone on to practice elsewhere. The only thing I can figure is that the hospital didn't want the bad press and so didn't report to the state BoN.

 

[Promethean]

OK everyone, relax, (making a huge assumption that OP is male and married to a woman) he didn't say he was planning on having sex with his spouse, just bringing her to the call room.

It's hard to believe that a woman wouldn't have better sense than to even float this terrible idea. My bias is that women tend to have a better sense of social boundaries and propriety. Also, I find them to be more sensitive to matters related to cleanliness (call rooms are kinda gross, usually) and comfort (our call rooms have gravel filled mattresses, I swear.)

Either way. If you love your spouse and want to enjoy a night with them away from home, take them to a nice hotel or bed and breakfast on your post call night. Soft, clean sheets, privacy, and hopefully no codes at 1 am, 2:30am, 3am, 4:45am, etc.

 

[Shikima]

You don't bring your wife to the call room, you bring nurses and techs to the call room. What's wrong with you?

You've won the Internet for today with this post.

 

[SoyMilk]

This thread should be retitled: "Banging spouse in call room?"

 

[Gastrapathy]

We're pretty sure my oldest was conceived in a call room. It wasn't my fault. She was measuring temps and it was time. I'm not sure I consented. Q3 for 3 straight months and a wife with plans. What's a poor innocent boy to do. I was AD military at the time, so it was extra dumb.


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[DeadCactus]

What's this world coming to when a man can't even get a decent handjob after a 300am code... How else do you go back to sleep?

 

[Law2Doc]

I've known people who were rumored to have had their spouse (particularly when also a hospital employee) stay with them in the call room.word gets out. Eyebrows raise, but nobody actually got fired over it.

But to be honest there have been enough calls where I've just plopped down on the call room bed covered in sweat, MRSA and who knows what bodily fluids, hoping to catch an hour catnap before the pager goes off again. The last thing you want is company.

 

[DermViser]

You don't bring your wife to the call room, you bring nurses and techs to the call room. What's wrong with you?

Have you done this?

 

[IlDestriero]

Have you done this?

What happens in the call room stays in the call room.

 

[Law2Doc]

What happens in the call room stays in the call room.

Or at least gets taken away with the laundry...

 

[colbgw02]

What happens in the call room stays in the call room.

Or at least gets taken away with the laundry...

 

[BobBarker]

We had a resident keep her cat and husband in the call room for several days. Litter box and all.

 

[QofQuimica]

We had a resident keep her cat and husband in the call room for several days. Litter box and all.

You should be glad she had the litter box. It's not like the cat can use the toilet....though hopefully the husband could.