Streamlining Consent

[AD04]

It seems each place operates differently regarding consents for psychotropics. The place where I am at currently has physicians get their own consents. The place where I trained had nurses get consents and physicians rarely spoke to family.

I am looking to streamline the process and I don't want to waste my time playing phone tag. This is especially important if I am covering the unit on the weekend.

What does your institution do for consents? How can the process be streamlined?

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[Merovinge]

At my last inpt gig we were told that some accrediting body was tracking the number of patient's consented by physicians (I presume you mean for CAP). We had to at least document that we called the family, nurses could consent if the family called back after hours when we were gone. This makes a lot of sense as the attending as a phone call to the primary guardian is an essential component of an inpt stay and if one needs to add a new med during the stay something is going on that makes a second call worthwhile.

I'm a little surprised if you are the weekend rounding doc that you are starting new meds on any regularity. I've moonlighted in that capacity and it's probably around 1% of my encounters when I would be starting a new psychotropic, almost always something mild for sleep. I would keep those calls real brief and certainly have nursing get the consent if the family didn't answer on my first phone call.