Monday, January 04, 2010

Just a Simple Request

When a patient gets transferred from one facility, let's call it Health Care Facility A, to another, let's call it Health Care Facility B, flow of information can be critical for proper follow-up for the patient's needs. Often whoever is caring for the patient at Facility A speaks directly with the receiving professional at Facility B, as the patient is being rolled out the door at Facility A. (This is by no means the only communication, because are procedures all along the way including a formal acceptance of the patient by Facility B.) But the last-minute report, usually exchanged between nurses, can be very useful. It can be especially useful if the nurse at facility A has cared for the patient for longer than ten minutes, although this is not always possible.

My simple request is this: if, at Facility A, the patient has loudly and frequently voiced a preference for receiving a dozen root canals with no pain reliever while lying on a bed of nails over being transferred to Facility B, could someone include that in the report? It would sure help me do my spiritual assessment... actually, it would help me preserve my hearing while attempting to do my spiritual assessment.

2 Comments:

Blogger Tim Colburn said...

Probably never gonna happen. The people at Facility A might well assume that such a report could be seen as confrontational --or even insulting-- by the personnel at Facility B, and would thus be reluctant to say anything. Much easier for them to avoid the issue and just let you (at B) hear the ranting...

9:38 AM  
Blogger terri c said...

Well, not so much confrontational--they can always fall back on the euphemistic but generally clearly understood "She's been a little agitated today..." which warns the receiving facility to assign a room near the nurses' station, contact the doctor fot orders so plenty of medicine is on hand, and batten down the hatches. OTOH, if they are honest about HOW agitated this person is, the receiving institution may scream and run, figuratively speaking.

10:24 PM  

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