Our doctor’s office has a 24 hour nurse line. Usually the nurse can and will advise you what to do, but rarely, if ever, does a doctor within our practice call you back personally.
More likely than not the nurse will tell you what to do, or else tell you to take your child to the nearest ER or urgent care.
And you’d have to be pretty stupid to ignore your child’s trouble breathing.
Even if your doctor doesn’t have a nurse line you should have the common sense to seek out help at the ER or local urgent care.
It stems from the Doctor as God belief. Doctors can do no wrong, and we regular people can’t bother them on the weekends! They also should NEVER be questioned, heck, they went to med school, I didn’t! These beliefs drive me nuts, doctors are there to do their jobs. They get paid to be on call in non-office hours, and while I think it’s important to not abuse the paging services (“Jimmy sneezed twice in an hour, it must be pneumonia!”), it is there to be used.
I call and ask to talk to a nurse all the time. If you ask me, we pay doctors to damn much and they should be made to wait for us!
I know! I don’t get that either. I try to not think badly about them, maybe their area doesn’t have that access.
I grew up where we had the doc’s home phone numbers. I can remember the doc coming to my house when there was snow on the ground and he had his kids in the car with it running. He gave me a shot for a fever or something.
In my town we call the local hospital and they page which every doc is on call that day. All our docs participate in this. The pediatricians do their own group so they are dealing with kid stuff though.
So if I felt I needed to speak to a doc I’d simply do that.
BUT BUT BUT if a child is having an allergic reaction they need to be seen, not talked to the doc about.
IF IF IF a child is having trouble breathing they need to be seen. No need to ask us, we’re ALL going to say take them to the ER.
The only reason’s I would bother the doc at home is if the person had had a procedure done that day and something didn’t seem right. Perhaps they had a tooth pulled and they have a knot forming on their jaw. Is a stitch coming out, the wound was starting to seep some fluids.
Something that only THAT particular doc could answer. He could say go to the ER too but he might say that what was happening was normal and to just put ice on it.
No you cannot. I called once with a newborn spiking a big fever. They always write to call if it’s over XYZ for under 3 months. They refused to take the call as it was only for emergencies. I guess mine was not. I really needed dosing info on meds.
So I will never call the Dr. unless I am about dead now. I felt so embarrassed!
We have a health links line we can call for advice, walk-in clinics, urgent care centers and emergency rooms that we can use outside of our doctors office hours, but no, we cannot call our doctor after hours.
For our local clinics, it doesn’t make much sense to call after hours because they can’t give advice over the phone. They always recommend a trip to the ER, no matter the case.
Our pediatric endocrinologist, however, has a 24 hour help line. Within 20 minutes of our call, we get phoned by the doctor on call, no matter the time. I appreciate them so much!
I struggle with whether to call or not. We have doctors in our family, and they are always happy to help their patients, but I see how much time they spend away from their families, so I always take that into consideration when I am contemplating calling a doctor after hours.
My son had his wisdom teeth taken out yesterday, and he has had complications (I won’t go into details). I struggled with whether or not to call the surgeon all evening yesterday, and finally called this morning. I spoke to a nurse, and she felt it was urgent enough to call the doctor and have him call me. He ended up having us meet him at the office this morning (Saturday). I appreciated it so much. My son will likely be fine, but medications needed to be changed, and we need to monitor him closely.
I don’t make an after hours call easily, but I’m glad that doctor’s are available if needed. I was extremely thankful this morning.
Our clinic is open M-F from 7am until 5pm or 7pm, depending on the day. If you call the clinic after-hours you will get a recording. There is no live person answering the phone. You can leave a message but you won’t be called back until Monday. They direct you to call Urgent Care if you need help right away.
The hospital’s Urgent Care desk is open every day until 10pm. You can speak with a nurse or doctor, but it may not be your nurse or doctor. You get whoever is on rotation/on call.
If it is between 10pm to 7am, then you can get help at the ER. Unfortunately, my city does not have any ‘Minute Clinics’ or similar.
what can my doctor DO for me at that time? Oh, I tried calling a few times when each of my girls were young, and each and every time I was told to “go to the ER” if I was worried. After being told that over and over you just know that calling the doctor really does no good usually.
NOW after my daughter had kidney surgery we DID call the surgeon at 4 a.m. on Sunday morning, and it was HIS PERSONAL cell phone, not an answering service, isn’t that so cool? He walked us through an emergency cath removal and all was ok because of it. So there are times when calling will do good, but they are few and far between in my opinion
Our doctor workd 7 days a week and evening hours too. If I need a doctor off hours…go to the emergency oom!!