The Pediatric Hospital Consultant
Jan E. Drutz MD1
1 Associate Professor of Clinical and Pediatrics, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX
Most pediatricians have been asked at one time or another to be a consultant or have been the primary care physician asking for a consultation. We or our consultant colleagues, however, often fail to appreciate the subleties inherent in our respective roles.
Although communication among physicians, both written and verbal, is essential for optimal patient care, communication between individual physician, parent, and patient not only extends common courtesy but also remains crucial in our present medicolegal climate. How often have we failed to tell a parent that we have asked for a consultant's opinion or, more embarrassingly, been asked to be the consultant and then walked in on the patient only to discover that no member of the family had ever been told by the patient's physician who we were or why we were there?
