OT doctors

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I know nurses will absolutely not make a call unless it's serious.

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Wat

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Have any of you ever been on call? Who decides who gets that? I know nurses will absolutely not make a call unless it's serious. I'm not sure what an MD can do in a emergency room.

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Very variable.

Most hospitals do an unassigned call system...i.e. if you aren't a patient of anyone or your physician for your problem doesn't see patients/have priveledges that for that hospital, it goes to whoever is on city call which is variable.

If you are an "assigned" patient, then usually they'll call your physician or if your physicians group does a practice call system, then you may see one of their partners.

Eta:

The above is mostly for hospital ED/consults etc.

I'd you're talking about just calling the office in the middle of the night, again varies by practice. Some take their own patients calls, some have a rotating call in their group for triages etc.

A lot of places use a nurse triage answering service which they can use to weed out phones call that are emergent/urgent vs things that can wait until Monday.

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Have any of you ever been on call?

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Every fifth night of my life for the past decade.

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I know nurses will absolutely not make a call unless it’s serious.

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You can’t be serious, right? It all depends on the quality and experience of the nurse in question. I’ve been called in the middle of the night two times in my career to get “something for chapped lips.”

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I’m not sure what an MD can do in a emergency room.

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What does this mean? I’ve seen everything in an ER from a patient being discharged from the triage room because malingering was identified all the way to a chest being opened to perform direct cardiac massage.