A couple days ago I received an urgent call from a friend seeking medical advice for her husband: she described his condition and asked if he should go to the ER.

This situation is not new to me, it’s happened numerous times in various iterations over the past 5 years.  What was different this time is that I’m not technically a medical student now, but actually,  really, truly an MD…  …  …

Okay, stay calm.  The obvious caveats:

1) I graduated 2 weeks ago, and haven’t learned anything new in the interim (not technically true, since I’m studying for PALS, but close enough).

2) Even if I was a “real doctor,” we are supposed to avoid making diagnoses over the phone, for both ethical and legal reasons (aka: I haven’t actually seen the patient).

I advised my friend of both these facts, and then gave them maybe the best available piece of advice: if you feel bad enough to be considering a trip to the ER, you should probably go.

This story has a happy ending (no, not that kind, and no, I’m not putting in a link), as her husband did go to the ER, where they juiced him up with a liter of normal saline (everyone feels better after a liter of NS, trust me), gave him some meds and sent him on his way with nary a law suit in site.  A good day for all.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 4th, 2008 at 7:08 am by Rebecca and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.