Thursday, August 6, 2009

Reflex Consults

A nurse called me the other day to notify me that a patient's stool sample came back positive for the c. difficile toxin. I told her to start the patient on the usual treatment regimen (oral vancomycin, or po/IV metronidazole).

Then she asked me if I wanted to get an ID consult.

Why would I do that? I asked.

I dunno. That's what everyone else does, she said.

2 comments:

tom said...

Rather than ask why everyone else does get the ID consult?

Anonymous said...

here, I did the paper work for you

Consult request: code# CYA01
Service selected: ID
Reason: Management of common post antibiotic infection that I ran across hundreds of time during residency that I can and have treated in my sleep.