Tuesday, November 14, 2006

On Call

NewFNP hates being on call for several very valid reasons.

One reason is that, for some reason, patients do not hesitate to call at 10:00 PM to cancel their dental appointment for the following day. After a glass of wine, newFNP could not give a shit whether or not you cancel your appointment and she most certainly does not want her private evening time disturbed by this mundane request. She also wonders who in the hell thinks to call the after-hours phone to cancel their appointment! NewFNP knows that many of her patients are not savvy and wishes that she was allowed to simply hang up on them. Alas, there is a record of who is on call and newFNP is still interested in maintaining her employment.

Secondly, newFNP has to cart the stupid call phone everywhere she goes, including the gym, dinners out, H&M, JCrew, etc. What the hell. Please, leave newFNP to her elliptical machine, hamachi carpaccio, $12 t-shirts and $150 cashmere v-necks in peace. NewFNP had 19 calls yesterday. Nineteen. One was for a medical reason. Eighteen were front office issues.

Finally, in newFNP's clinic, clinicians are not compensated for their on call time. If newFNP were compensated $5 per on-call day, she would have 3 new cashmere sweaters per annum. Now that would make the call experience much more worth it.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Echo the HATE of being on call. I am on call every Thursday night and every third weekend -- which works out to Thu-Mon every third weekend. 96 hours straight (albeit I am in the office for some of the time). HATE. I average between 0 (bliss!) and 20 calls per night, and 50+ calls per weekend. Tied to the phone? Yes. Mundane, rediculous calls? Yes. A few emergencies? Absolutely -- but then I tell them to go to the ER, since I'm part of a family practice and I simply cannot and will not open the office on Saturday evening because you and your friends have "had a few" and one of you lost the tip of your thumb in a miter box. The calls I hate the most? Narcotics.

Dear God in Heaven, what makes patients believe they can call me at 0500 Sunday morning and ask me to refill their dilaudid? I won't!

A resident I know was on call one evening and a patient called him at 0330 to ask about his routine test results. Resident gave them to pt and was not pleased. Turns out Resident has the brass balls of a carnival monkey when the next week Resident was on call and called the patient at 0345 to ask "How is everything going for you? Just wanted to check in."

Love it. Hate call.
-- Jessica

kate loving shenk said...

great blog--

here's the link to sign up for my weekly newsletter for nurses:

http://www.nursingcareertransformation.com/
simplenewslettersignup.html

enjoy, and happy thanksgiving--

kate loving shenk

Anonymous said...

No one forced NewMP to work at a urban community health clinic. With the acute shortage of healthcare professionals, she can easily join a fancy celeb infested place in Beverly hills like Cedar's

steve said...

Called to cancel a dental appointment? What?? Why would a Nurse Practitioner being acting as a receptionist at a dentist's office? I think you deserve better than that!

Felipe said...

it is bad that they are not compensated for their on call time and it is weird too - costcutting?