Home Forums Discussions General Discussion Happy Thanksgiving!

To Everyone in ACville...

Wishing you all a wonderful holiday. I for one, am giving thanks for this helpful community and my online friends.

And as tired as many of us are, I'm sure we are giving thanks for a few days off!

Happy Giving Thanks Day!

Rainy,
Same to you and yours. And to everyone on the board as well. Have a great holiday everyone and "let's be safe out there". Catch ya all on the other side...
Paul & Nancy

Okay, I'm having a hard time having a happy Thanksgiving as I am on-call. Bert, could you suggest a work-around?

But, seriously, I am very thankful for all my blessings this year, and I include Amazing Charts and the folks on this User Board among them.

Happy Thanksgiving from Arkansas, y'all!

Well, since I am on call EVERY single day of the year, I don't think I am the one to come up with a workaround

But, I join in with Barbar and Paul and Brian in wishing everyone a Happy Thanksgiving.

Nice, Hill Street Blues line Paul.

Happy Thanksgiving for the AC Family

Bert,
Ya you are right that was what I was hinting at but we both blew it... Re-reading it just now made me remember that it was really; "and let's be careful out there." if memory serves me correctly...

Now speaking of great older cop shows, what was the one that took place in Baltimore, the detectives drove those crumby little Chevettes or something like that. Yaffet Kodo and Andre Broward where on it, and Dt John Munch from Law and Order was the same character played by the same actor (Belzer) who transfered to NYC to continue his character in L&O. I can never remember the name of that show, it drives me crazy. I never watched it too much when it ran first up but I loved it in re-runs..... I feel so lame.
Happy and Healthy gang....

Paul:

You talking about "Homicide: Life on the Street"?

Bert:

I've done that 24/7 call thing before: no fun. It's a shame all life's problems don't have a workaround!

God bless, and again Happy Thanksgiving!

Brian,
Yes it's "Homicide; Life on the Streets". Thanks so much.

Bert,
Now let me ask you guys something. Nancy is a solo just like you guys and her call partner is a solo with a mid-level. Basically the two women always cover for themselves except if one is totally out of town and even then most of the time they get their own calls thru the cells and answering systems; so we practicelly never answer eachothers calls. Recently Laura went to a big seminar for her EMR and so she was out of touch for a bit and we covered for a few hours here and there while she was in the air basically.

But we do some decent patient education here and so Nancy probably doesn't get more than a handful of calls a week. Sometimes days without any and then possibly a few on any given day, so it's not such a big deal except those few times some new patient needs to be "taught" the ropes might we say. A few needy, or manipulative ones here and there, but for the most part this is one of the few bright spots in our practice.

Things were much worse when she was in a big group and the two docs from each of the two boxes in her zone had to take call for one another. Some of those patients from the other box were just unreal. There were a lot of calls on those weekends especially. Now as a solo with well "educated" patients most nights are quite acceptable. We do hand out a two sided thing that explains a lot of things and we have signs up in the waiting and exam rooms that remind folks to call ahead of time fo refills and the like with a statement from her old partner at the big practice: "A lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine", with a picture of a guy with his hands to his face screaming... Quite effective, really.

So are you patients less "eduacted"? And might that be the large number of Maineciad patients you are dealing with? Hope you had a good restful holiday my friends....

Paul,

Your practice sounds a lot like mine. Once I went solo I spent a great deal of time "educating" my patients about what was an emergency and what could wait until the next business day. Subsequently, the number of calls I received dropped to almost nil, save those from the hospital. Once I left the hospital, my calls are almost non-existant. Having to cover for my partners when I was in a large group was one of the most frustrating things I ever experienced. One of the docs was a fantastic person but simply did not have the guts to tell his patients their calls were inappropriate. Subsequently, the rest of us had to suffer their calls also when we covered. I distinctly remember one elderly patient who routinely called bewteen 1-2 AM with questions like "How much Coke is safe to drink at one time?" Now, I suspect she was just lonely but to let this behavior continue was simply inconsiderate to the rest of us. I finally had to be the bad gal and explain this to her. But, the silly calls stopped, much to everyone's glee.

Leslie

Did anybody noticed my own typo on "educated" at the end... Speaks to my own learning disablities I guess.... oh well.

I guess I would be a bad call partner

I get ridiculously inappropriate calls, and I just am way too wimpy to say anythning. Leslie, do you have a copy of what you told her that you could send me? <G>

@Paul, just remember:

We don't need no eduaction. We don't need no thought control.
No dark sarcasm in the classroom. Teacher, leave those kids alone.

Pink Floyd, The Wall.

Somehow I don't think I needed to tell you that.

"We're so happy we can hardly count" Man that song is just as relivent to our business as to my old one that is was written about.... "Come in here dear boy have a cigar" Just sign your life away on some messed up contract with some really selfish greedy SOB's...