Sometimes

Sometimes i really like my job.  I just spend so much time trying to get a minute to DO it.

The latest is podiatry calling me.  "We saw your patient Mary."
"Her insurance requires that we know the last day she saw you.  Can you look that up for us?"

What??
I realize I will never be without work and out on the street.

But I sent a patient to a dermatologist recently because I was pretty sure what he had but he was getting better so slowly and his wife was terribly frightened.  I never heard what they said, so I called. "Oh, we sent that report," they said, and named an address they mailed it to - where  I worked locums a few months in 1996.
"But I sent you a letter..."
"Oh that goes to the doctor."

What??

I like it that my education can be used to help someone who does not know what I know. 

I admitted a 3 yr old this past week.  The mom told me that the nurse asked her if I had explained things.  Mom got pouty.
"Yes! She tells me everything! Not like the last doctor."
But when I needed to send the three year old home in the midst of heavy snow, I needed to give them a dose of amoxicillin.
Only I am allowed to hand it to the Mom.  But only the nurse was allowed to mix it.  But she didn't know how, so I told her.
I wasted an hour waiting for a dose of amoxicillin to come up 2 floors, for the nurse to  mix it so  I could hand it to Mom.

What??

So many rules, so well intended, that conflict with each other, waste time and money and hurt people.
So much frustration from everyone.
I mean, I like what I do but I can't do it.  I am too busy doing forms and calling podiatry back and explaining to people I wrote to that my address is on the the top of the letter, and wondering why a pathologist told me a specimen was normal when he printed it out as atypical, and re-doing prescriptions routinely that pharmacists lose and having specialists call me for additional information for people they will see tomorrow but when the patient shows up claiming they have no information at all- when they called the day before.

I put out fires more than I do my wor.

I like my job.
But I wish I could DO it.

Jean Antonucci MD

Comments

[Faith Holmes]

Boy did that strike a chord. I simplified my practice, only myself and one part time front office/billing person but am still having to waste so much time on doing things which feel like secretarial work to make up for inefficiencies/incompetence of specialists, pharmacies and systems.
Saw an 82 year old man for multiple complaints, including a last minute "oh I have a splinter", removed a 1.8 cm embedded splinter from his right hand. Four days later on a Saturday I get a call - he injured his hand - go to his home and bring him to the clinic, he caught his hand in his table saw - left fingers 2,3,4 with lacerations through extensor tendons over dorsal middle phalanx, 4th finger with bone fragments -- irrigated, put in digital block with lidocaine and marcaine (good thing because he had to wait 7 hours for surgery), dressing - called the hand surgeon who met us at the ER (yes took the patient to the ER in the closest city - we are in a rural town)....5 months later Medicare is still denying the visit for the hand because it falls within the global period for the procedure for removal of splinter in the right hand !!! --
Endless number of tales of frustration --

[Chicago Podiatric Surgeons]

if we could only live in the perfect world...