who's keeping score?

last night, i had a throwdown with a PA.

to summarize, i was staffing the inpatient pharmacy. the MOD (medical doctor on duty) entered a script for buprenorphine, or subutex (i couldn't find subutex.com, so here's suboxone, which contains buprenorphine). bottom line is only one MD in our hospital is allowed to prescribe it because special certification is required. guess what? the MOD was not that guy.

so after a frustrating discussion with the MOD, she hands the phone to some guy who starts berating me. i inquire, "i'm sorry, who is this?" to which the voice on the other end of the line replies, "i'm mr. ******, the PA in blah, blah, blah". voice continues to bully, saying how can i interrupt this patient's therapy, etc. etc. i say, "you don't need to get testy with me, we just need to figure out what we're going to do". after the telephone equivalent of a stare down, megalomaniac PA agrees to call MD who can prescribe the medication in question.

i must have really pissed him off when i told him not to get testy with me, cause what does PA do? calls the chief of pharmacy to tattle on me.

later i needed to confirm that PA really wanted to prescribe the same medication in 2 different forms to be given at the same time. when he returns my call, with an absolute lack of pleasantries, he just says "what do you want?" i explain, he says yes, he wants it as he wrote it. i confirm, and he says to just do what i want. what i wanted to do was walk down to the floor and punch him in the throat, but instead i paged the MOD and had the orders changed.

errgh.