(I briefly considered not writing this post and letting the headline speak for itself. But, you know me, I couldn’t resist elaborating a little bit.)
We are drowning in calls for treatment or advice. Many are too nonspecific to make any sense at all, like “can you send something in for a headache”. I mean, there are subspecialist doctors who ONLY treat headaches, and somebody wants me to treat theirs with no information whatsoever.
And many calls are about things most adults should know the answer to, if they had learned anything from their mothers and grandmothers growing up. But the way the world works today, families don’t usually support each other the way they used to.
And in today’s healthcare climate, barely even registered nurses are allowed to give general, commonsensical advice because of liability concerns.
If we can’t hire wise and experienced grandmothers, maybe Artificial intelligence could be of some use here???
A Country Doctor Writes: 
I worked in a busy emergency room many years ago. At least once a week I would have a mother come in between two and three in the morning for treatment of her baby’s diaper rash. It was a Military hospital, and many of the mothers were under the age of 20. They had not had the benefit of advice from their mothers and grandmothers. And were frequently living all alone, because their husbands were aboard ship far far away from family. It’s a shame that these young mothers didn’t receive more information growing up. And it was also a sham the military at that time did not have support services for these young mothers. Thankfully, things have changed as far as the military support goes, I don’t know about the passing on of family knowledge. But I can say that I used to hate to get awakened at two in the morning, but could understand a young mother‘s predicament with a screaming baby, and neither of them being able to sleep.
LOL! Back eons ago, I took my newborn baby to the emergency room because he would not stop crying. Then doctor looked at him for a min, put her finger in his mouth and the baby immediately started sucking like there was no tomorrow. The doctor then said to me, “ your baby is starving” …. An special nurse was sent to the room to … teach me how to breastfeed my baby. I had been surrounded by grandmothers at home! Mine, my mother and my mother in law, no one understood what was going on. I was a new mother and didn’t know what to do! Sometimes a professional touch is needed 😉.
I’ll volunteer….I am old and wise and used to be a pharmacist and am glad I am not anymore!!
One of the funniest stories from the frontlines in CA:
At the triage station a woman said that she was there because she had a dream that she fell and was in the ED to confirm that she had no injuries.