Medical Time Suck

I cannot believe the time I spend doing non-medical things for my medical patients. Some of course are necessary, for example - speaking to patient's families. In a way, you can consider that part of a patient's health, especially if they partially or completely depend on their family for assistance at home or for their medical care. However, I would bet that the majority of my time is spent doing non-medical tasks. Let me give an example.

Today I had a patient who was admitted several days ago from a shelter for fainting and having chest pain. At first it sounds serious, but it turns out he probably is an alcoholic and "passed out" after drinking too much, and his chest pain looked clinically like a mild rotator cuff injury. Moreover, he had no idea what his medications were, which shelter he lived in, what kind of past medical history he had (cardiac or otherwise). For this patient, not only did I spend hours on his medical care, but I also spent hours calling 4 or 5 different shelters trying to find out where he lived and what medications he took. I called his health center many many times trying to get a hold of his doctor, and when I finally reached her, she didn't know anything about him. I spent time talking to the medical records department of another hospital, getting the patient's authorization for medical record release on paper, faxing it to the medical records department, and then waiting for them to fax me the studies he had when he was admitted there. Then finally, it took quite a while to get him discharged as we had to involve social work so that he could get sent to a shelter using a cab voucher and could get medical follow-up (which he probably will not do) with our cardiology department.

These are all very frustrating things, and unfortunately it's the poorest and neediest patients who often need all this extra attention. Sometimes they come in to the hospital partially to find a warm, dry place to sleep, a place to clean themselves, and 3 meals a day in addition to medical care. I think a lot of doctors and nurses often take a look at these patients and brush them off since they don't have a good medical reason to be in the hospital or sometimes are actively lying and trying to deceive us in order to stay in the hospital. However, I see it like this - if you spend the time on them now, then hopefully they will have good medical follow-up afterwards and won't get to a state where they have to be admitted to the hospital again, thereby decreasing the amount of our work. Of course, some patients are just hopeless - they're well known to the Emergency Department and the medical staff, and I guess that's just something we all have to accept.