Hi Pamela,
I started a new job.
So I asked to be in the new satellite clinic as there would be 3 exam rooms and an office. I was told I could. My first day there I was told I couldn’t. They put me in the basement of this old building. I never would have accepted the job if I had to work there. It’s crowded and I have only one exam room. I need to bring patients to me and sit with them while completing electronic chart. I hate it. I have no phone (only my cell phone).
Two weeks now and I realize they are telling patients I am the new diabetes and stroke expert. I am not! I did not sign up for that! I have never handled complicated diabetes on insulin or pump!
Nobody is helping me. LACK OF STAFF! They tell me that it will get better.
Last week a patient waited an hour for discharge instruction after surgical procedure and was then told by a nurse practitioner to go home without them. Now a complicated wound infection.
They dumped a sick child in my exam room and left. I had to find someone to get vital signs. She came but didn’t do her job. No heart rate. No respiratory rate or oxygen sats were measured. I have no medical assistant helping me.
I am being asked to do allergy testing interpretation and management without proper training
The EMR is awful!! Still trying to learn it. Nobody seems to want to help. Notes in EMR are awful there is NEVER AN ASSESSMENT/PLAN from other providers. I am writing it on my PLAN page.
So have no clue what is going on really with patients.
Specialist notes are not up to date.
Immunizations are not recorded in EMR.
I am thinking of quitting after 2 weeks. I can’t stand this!
Should I put up with this?
Elena
My advise: QUIT YOUR JOB.
What do you think?
QUIT!
Sounds like she already knows how to operate solo without staff and in a small space. Seems like perfect training for opening a small private practice!
Elena, you could do your own thing, be your own boss, see whatever kinds of patients you want, promote yourself as an expert in whatever diseases (or better yet, health promotion) you would like and really have training in, have an office with sunlight not in a basement dungeon, pick an EMR of your choice (or forego one completely), and Be. Who. You. Want!
There is no reason to work in conditions like that! Leave while you still have energy to escape!
I agree with Pamela. You are being set up to fail. Cut your losses while you can.
Sorry this is happening to you. It sounds unsafe for the patients, and also for you. Seriously.
I would carefully document the discrepancies between the job offer, and the actual situation you’ve been given. Would go back pronto with these to the administrators who hired you. If their only response is “it will get better,” with no clear plan of how and when, I would quit.
I don’t know what your contract says about giving notice, but from what you say, they surely have not honored their end of things either.
By the way — have you taken time to consider your IDEAL medical practice? Doing that before taking another position may help you a lot.
Good luck!
This is dangerous and she could lose her license. Yes she should quit!
(retired RN)
Hi
I had gone something like this a decade ago. The answer is yes leave. But don’t “quit in a blaze of glory”.
You need to find out what your tail insurance is. Do you pay or do they pay ( I did not find out till I was trying to leave that I was responsible) also the less years you are there the less the tail will be. But be sure that your tail has the broadest possible coverage as it sounds like bad things aelikely to happen. If you find out you have to pay tail don’t let that stop you Do it ! It will be a memory in just a year and you can get payments broken up. Interview elsewhere like a maniac look on Glass Door and Quarry and just talk carefully with folks before making any more decisions. The surprising thing will be this you will reach out to recruiter and too many jobs… So leave with something lined up but also negotiate a few mo this off before next job. Again money is so not important in a short term.
Hang in there when it happened to me at 29 I was freaking out. But I know so many friends who expected to retire somewhere and it blew up in their face. They left places they were in for years.
Unexpectedly or under duress . A war hero was carried out of clinic fired with no cause. He won his wrongful termination suit and donated $$$ to refugees.
So it will be fine fine fine grow from this be wiser and happier and know your worth.
Yes, quit now. I would send a list of the problems you encountered to someone at the top of the chain
Wow…Elena you already know the answer….get out of there before you become their next disaster!
My advice to graduating residents (and others)… make sure you get it in writing when interviewing and negotiating for a new job, and always make sure you can get out of your contract if it doesn’t turn out as you were led to believe.
If you cannot fix all those problems then you need to QUIT. It was not what you expected, not what you were told and not what you agreed to. I just had something similar happen to me and the best thing that can happen is for it to stop.
How terribly spoiled -You don’t know what is going on with your patients? Then find out -a sk them or their other doctors and stop blaming the EHR. Get up to speed if you lack training because who is going to even see their lab results when you leave? a nurse?
Boo hoo you have to get up and bring your own patients to your exam room? Why is this a problem? it gives you insight into them from the first moment. Doctors in many countries lack any support at all and those in war zones not only don’t have equipment they are under fire and they somehow manage to provide good care.
Your calling as a doctor/healer is to put your patients first and who will care for them when you seflishly quit? Obviously they need you so focus on them and not whether or not you have a nice office to work in and your phone.
I think you are who’s spoiled. I’m a nurse, I worked for head start for two years and took a lot of brief histories on children and family. Some patients don’t know what to tell you and they may not relate crucial details in a 10-15 minute appointment. Especially in one where you have to do your own vitals as well as take your own history from square one.
Telling someone that others have it worse than they do is a form of victim blaming. This person was promised a certain work environment and was given a whole other one. If she had signed up for a difficult clinic that would have been one thing.
Quit! You’re hurting yourself by staying. If you are not okay, your patients will not be getting the care the deserve.
Find a place where you can be in your “element” and provide the best patient care possible.
Omg please quit. For yourself, your soul and the greater good. Only when they understand what we will not tolerate will they stop…. Dr. Tracy Kritz, MD
As a true healer you must stand up to the abuse for the health of your patients and yourself! Also protect your colleagues by boycotting these “health care” institutions that are so disrespectful to their staff and patients.
My doc quit her old job. She’s an ideal doc now. You saved her life. She couldn’t handle the stress. You were here Savior. She quit her job and went out and opened her new practice like a whilwind.
Your concept of saving doctors is good, jut not a complete picture.
You are the perfect example, only one interest single, SAVE THE DR help the dr and only the dr.
Then I guess we patients hope like a snowball in hell they help us?
My newest dr She opened up a new business that is totally focused on herself. This does not help patients. It is all about her. I had to move along at her pace, HER WAY.
You are saving one dr at a time, but you fail to teach them their is more to the story than themselves.
My new dr needs to quit this job to. She does not care for patients and places blame on them.
I got to see this dr you saved 3 times and then I WAS TERMINATED.
I asked for your help, this lady needs it- she is really angry and hostile and really is out for herself, having been unhappy for so long in her job dr.
She should go do something where she don’t deal with people. Something she likes, like landscaping.
She says shes like a tree… then says she don’t bend. I say She needs to grow, or she will break. She broke me all I was – honest and looking for reasonable medical care.
glad you saved her – shes sacrificing patients. ME
she did tell me I need a lawyer and a doctor I will find one.
I still need a dr as i have an untreated bowel obstruction she set me off on my own with.
She gave me 30 days that she would be my doctor Her choice.
She has ignored my requests for help, I still have time.
Her choice not to honor her word.
That is not professional. She can say way she wants I think she rolls that way. “Drs in NYS can do anything they want.” nys health dept.
She needs real help, she is really pissed inside. She is not a helper, maybe she never was, I don’t know.
She has her accounting. We recorded all our encounters as i have been abused in the recent past.
she was like jeckyl and hyde this last visit .
I am suffering with no care, again.
Start the process of quitting now. There is no way that you can meet the local standard of care given the facilities, staff, and tools that you (don’t) have to work with. Follow the advice of other commenters to get your ducks in a row before you do that. Also, document all of the abuses that are being piled on you before you quit and connect them with how they are harming you and your patients.
The ideal medical clinic concept would work for you. Most people who work in that paradigm are solo practitioners like Dr. Wible who practice some form of Direct Primary Care.
Also keep in mind that the Ideal Clinic is any situation that is your dream job. I am the Medical Director of a Federally Qualified Community Health Center. It is my dream job. It has the Pamela Wible seal of approval as an Ideal Clinic because it is ideal for me.
Avoid corporate medicine at all costs.
Yes! Ideal is what patients and doctors and staff consider ideal. Nobody in Washington DC can mandate this “ideal” which is ideally defined and designed by the end user and the doc at the local level.