I pit moronic doctors

[Ferret_Herder]

Heh, my father-in-law was hospitalized after a stroke, and the nurses were waking him up every 2 hours for blood draws even though it wasn’t noted in the orders. I think it was around 3 or 4 am when the screaming match started…

As for the doc not having his results and thus not being able to do anything with the patient - isn’t that what residents are for?

[Nunavut_Boy]

@Linus Van Pelt

What about the practice of having routine, non-emergency blood draws scheduled for 3 or 4 in the morning? When I asked about it, I was told, “It’s because the doctors like having test results when they come in in the morning.” So the Dr’s convenience is more important than my wife, who has been up for 40 plus hours and been through a difficult childbirth, getting some rest. Gotcha.

At any (big, 400-800 bed) hospital that I’ve worked at, routine blood draws were started at 0730 and usually ended somewhere around 0900. Anything between about 2200 and 0730 were supposed to be ‘STAT’ bloodwork.

[Linus_Van_Pelt]

@USCDiver

Well if your wife’s doctor rounds from 5am to 7am and then goes to work in the office from 8am-5pm and your wife’s lab results aren’t back when he rounds, you want him to hold up all the patients in his clinic to come back to take care of your wife because she wanted to get an extra 5 minutes of sleep at 4am? You’re in the hospital not in a hotel, get over it.

That’s true. That’s why I didn’t yell at the tech and throw her out on her butt when she came in. Actually, we politely asked her why she was coming in at that time and then let her go about her work. She was just trying to do her job and doesn’t make those decisions. Nor did we yell at any other member of the hospital staff.

No, I don’t expect special treatment for my wife (though I realize that my admitedly somewhat snarky post might make make it seem like it). But would it be imposible to arrange the schedule so that routine items like non-urgent blood draws don’t happen in the middle of the night? Apparently, according to Nunavut Boy, that type of schedule is neither unheard-of nor impossible to devise.

It seems to me to be part of a larger (though thankfully slowly changing) attitude that seems to have prevailed in the medical establishment for many years - shut up and follow the routine. Patient comfort (physical and emotional) and desires seem to be not only subordinate to medical necessity (as should unquestionably be the case), but completely irrelevent to those making decisions and setting policy. At least that’s how it feels much of the time.

[Cat_Whisperer]

I second what Nunavut Boy said - I worked in three different hospitals, and the routine blood draws were always first thing in the morning for the day shift (usually around 7 or 7:30 am) - you have to accommodate all the diabetics in the hospital (and there were always lots of them) who need a fasting glucose, but also need their breakfasts.

Ferret Herder, I have no idea why nurses would be drawing un-ordered blood. One - nurses don’t draw blood, lab techs do (except in extremely rare cases - lab techs are the phlebotomy experts in a hospital), and two - nobody draws un-ordered blood. Why on earth would they? Just for the heck of it? That sounds really weird to me.