I'm on call this week. Got a call yesterday from a patient frantically needing a medication refill.

[Aristus]

I didn't speak to the patient; I spoke to the call center worker who told me: "He needs a refill. He says it can't wait until Monday."

I replied: "He seemed to think it could wait until Saturday..."

[3catwoman3]

1. When I am on call, which I only do from 6-10 PM...

...one evening a week, I check for voice mail messages at the top of every hour. My physician colleagues take over after 10.

This past Wednesday, when I checked in at 10 PM, there was a voicemail from a dad, left at 9:10 PM with a question about his daughter’s birth control prescription. I checked the patient’s chart on my work laptop, and there was no evidence that our practice had ever prescribed birth control for her, no prescriptions of any kind in her med list, and she hasn’t been seen since 2019 for any reason. And has never been seen by me.

Not knowing what time people other than myself go to bed, I decided I wasn’t going to return this call that night. During regular business hours, I did call - went to voicemail right away, so I just left a message saying that it did not look as if we had been the prescribers and they would have to contact whoever.

After hours call is supposed to be for things that are urgent.

In my first private practice job, I did take call all night, and once got a call at 3 AM from a mom who was in the hospital with pneumonia, wanting to know if she could make an appointment to get her child seen. I said, “ Yes, but I am unable to do that from my bedroom. You will have to call during regular office hours.“

This was in the days before cell phones, and if you didn’t stay home while on call, you’d have to carry around a bag of quarters to use in pay phones to make the calls. It was a real pain in the ass.