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Corporate suits or doctors.
There's this one radiologist, we'll call Dr Picky. Dr Picky sent us a love note a couple weeks ago about our bone scan protocols. Just so you know, there are three different kinds: whole body, limited, and three-phase. Dr Picky sent a note on a patient that had a limited, but in her opinion should have had a 3-phase + whole body. She has also decreed that in the future, orders for bone scans must be faxed to her 24 hours in advance so she can tell us what kind of bone scan she wants. Also, all pertinent outside films and reports need to be gathered and available for the reading radiologist. Also, we are to show all bone scans to either Dr Picky, Dr Cranky, or Hot Doc before the patient leaves to see if they want additional images.
Not only is that a whole lot of extra work for us (and not always feasible to get done in the first place), but apparently Dr Picky didn't inform Dr Cranky or Hot Doc of this new decree that one of the three of them must check all bone scans. Hence the moniker for Dr Cranky since he really didn't like being interrupted from whatever he was doing to check a bone scan for us today. Especially since the scan was as close to textbook normal as one can get (while we techs can't tell you if your scan is normal, we generally know anyway). He groused that we didn't need him to tell us what a normal bone scan looks like (I'd agree, but then it's not really my call as a tech; it's his as the physician).
Hot Doc was nicer about it. He was at another location and asked why I called him specifically. When I explained to him that we'd been given that directive he laughed and told me I should follow it since that was a fight I didn't want to be in the middle of. I wholeheartedly agree, even though we techs already seem to be in the middle of it.
The real kicker, though? Dr Picky only works part-time. Dr Cranky and Hot Doc are full-time with full schedules. Dr Picky is generally already gone by the time any bone scan patients actually come back for imaging (there's a 3-hr break between tracer injection and imaging). So she doesn't have to deal with all the fallout. Part-timers don't need to be issuing directives for the entire organization. Especially when they don't inform their cohorts about them. And if they're going to be gone before they have to deal with them.
There's this one radiologist, we'll call Dr Picky. Dr Picky sent us a love note a couple weeks ago about our bone scan protocols. Just so you know, there are three different kinds: whole body, limited, and three-phase. Dr Picky sent a note on a patient that had a limited, but in her opinion should have had a 3-phase + whole body. She has also decreed that in the future, orders for bone scans must be faxed to her 24 hours in advance so she can tell us what kind of bone scan she wants. Also, all pertinent outside films and reports need to be gathered and available for the reading radiologist. Also, we are to show all bone scans to either Dr Picky, Dr Cranky, or Hot Doc before the patient leaves to see if they want additional images.
Not only is that a whole lot of extra work for us (and not always feasible to get done in the first place), but apparently Dr Picky didn't inform Dr Cranky or Hot Doc of this new decree that one of the three of them must check all bone scans. Hence the moniker for Dr Cranky since he really didn't like being interrupted from whatever he was doing to check a bone scan for us today. Especially since the scan was as close to textbook normal as one can get (while we techs can't tell you if your scan is normal, we generally know anyway). He groused that we didn't need him to tell us what a normal bone scan looks like (I'd agree, but then it's not really my call as a tech; it's his as the physician).
Hot Doc was nicer about it. He was at another location and asked why I called him specifically. When I explained to him that we'd been given that directive he laughed and told me I should follow it since that was a fight I didn't want to be in the middle of. I wholeheartedly agree, even though we techs already seem to be in the middle of it.
The real kicker, though? Dr Picky only works part-time. Dr Cranky and Hot Doc are full-time with full schedules. Dr Picky is generally already gone by the time any bone scan patients actually come back for imaging (there's a 3-hr break between tracer injection and imaging). So she doesn't have to deal with all the fallout. Part-timers don't need to be issuing directives for the entire organization. Especially when they don't inform their cohorts about them. And if they're going to be gone before they have to deal with them.
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