hey! alright so the scenario is, person A is rushed to the ER and tells the doctors which emergency contact to use. Person B, the emergency contact, gets a phone call.
my question is, what is said in that phone call? does the nurse or doctor call, how much info do they give, do they state the reason for calling is “you’re person A’s emergency contact, this happened, get here fast.” or something along those lines?
thanks!
EDIT: and how long after Person A tells them the info does Person B receive the call?
The emergency contact is not called at all unless the patient is unable to communicate meaningfully with the medical staff or with friends and family. My doctor’s office has my emergency contact number. They don’t phone my emergency contact every time I go in for my annual checkup.
I hope I’m not anybody’s emergency contact. It would be a fun prank to play on some guy picked out of the phone book. Or put down Donald Trump as an emergency contact
My elderly dad was on pain killers and that gave him bad constipation - he had to go to the ER for this. All I got was a message from my brother that he took my dad to the ER…
So I called the hospital (in another state) and they connected me with his nurse. She proceeded to go into *details *as to his condition and what EXACTLY she had done to resolve the problem! It was like she was giving a report to a doctor.
A simple “he was constipated and we have resolved the problem” would have been quite enough for me. I was relieved it was not a heart attack or something more serious. And did not care to hear the details of his treatment!
Are there documented best practices on this? Do any hospitals have formal rules on when exactly to call an emergency contact and how much detail to give, or do staff just “wing it” on a case-by-case basis?
In all the times I’ve been taken or taken myself to a hospital ER, they have never contacted my emergency contact.
Three days in hospital with a lacerated spleen, and I had to call my mom myself to let her know I was there. Perhaps if I’d died, or taken a catastrophic turn for the worse, they may have called, but as a rule, no one is calling your emergency contact just because you go to an ER.