If someone who is 18 and over gets injured and goes to the hospital, would their parents still get notified or no?
Important
On your phone (iPhone and Android) there are options to set an Emergency contact. This contact shows up on the lock screen of the phone including their phone numbers, and at least on my android device those number(s) can even be called without unlocking the device. I have my wife and father.
This can be really helpful for first responders if you’re involved in an accident or have a medical episode that leaves you unconscious, or even if you’re just seriously hurt and you can’t call someone yourself easily.
It can also be helpful for figuring out who the phone belongs to, in case you lose it. I have 100% dialed emergency contacts to be like “hey, whoever owns this phone lost it. Let them know that we have it at the front desk for [building], and they can come pick it up there.”
This may vary by country, but here no, unless you affirmatively designate them as able to know your medical information, and as emergency contacts.
They notify whoever is your emergency contact. You choose as an individual who is your emergency contact.
Which is my sister because my parents can fuck off.
But only the first one they can get in contact with.
And that’s if they need to.
So like if you’ve never been to that hospital, don’t have an ID on you, nobody recognizes you, and your can’t ID yourself, that’s a John/Jane Doe situation. Even if they CAN identify you, unless they have some sort of record of emergency contacts they don’t have anyone to contact.
As a practical matter, how does that work if I’ve never been a patient at that hospital and am unconscious? There are a number of hospitals/health systems in my city that I’ve never been to (and others that I haven’t been to in a very long time, so any expirations would have passed). If I were to be transported to one by ambulance, how would they locate any emergency contact?
Or would I simply be at the mercy of the medical practitioners and their best efforts/judgements until I either wake up or die?
I’m in the US, and we can assume that I have my wallet/ID/insurance card/etc on me at the time.
Does your state let you add an emergency contact when you get your driver’s licence?
If you’re unconscious, they’ll try to find next of kin. If they can’t, they’ll find some kind of advocate for you to work with the doctors
As others have said, if a patient has next of kin or emergency contact details listed somewhere accessible to the hospital, they may call if the contact can provide information that the patient can’t, especially if the patient is unconscious or delirious.
Of course, if the patient is otherwise aware and apparently of sound mind, then the patient can literally say “please do not contact my family / next of kin”. The hospital might say they weren’t going to, but no harm in asking. And if they do so anyway once they’ve been told not to, that’d be risking a lawsuit.
Anecdotally, I’ve always carried a next-of-kin card in my wallet, and it has come to my aid at least once.
The person or people on such a card don’t have to be parents either. A trusted friend or sibling might be preferable for people who don’t get along with, or no longer have, their parents.
Automatically, no. Not unless they’re listed as an emergency contact, and the patient is incapacitated.
Actual healthcare workers are free to point out where the additional nuance lies, cause there probably is some.
The specifics are probably going to depend on where in the world you are, in the US it’s generally going to be a no unless you’ve specifically listed them as an emergency contact, they’re your medical power of attorney (which is separate from legal power of attorney) etc.
I work in 911 dispatch, so I’m not specifically covered by HIPAA, though we have some similar regulations and obviously we rub up against the edges of the healthcare field. My wife also works in a psych hospital, and my sister in a nursing home so I get to hear a lot of stories about stuff like this.
My wife has to deal with a lot of cases where a parent is trying to contact the hospital about their adult child who’s a patient there, but since they’re not listed on the correct paperwork the hospital can’t even confirm that their child is in fact a patient there, even though they were standing right there next to them when they were admitted a couple hours earlier.
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I get calls at work a lot because someone’s child/parent, boyfriend/girlfriend, brother/sister etc. was taken to the hospital by ambulance earlier, and when they called the hospital they can’t tell them they’re there because they’re not on the paperwork, so they call us freaking out trying to figure out where their loved one is, and all I can say is that they were transported to the hospital, I can’t tell if they haven’t finished signing it, already been discharged/left AMA, if they possibly had to be transferred to a different hospital, or more likely the hospital just can’t confirm anything because the person calling isn’t an emergency contact.
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Recently I had a call from a woman who was freaking out. Her husband was missing, his car was in the driveway, and she saw a lot of blood around the house.
While she was on the phone with me her friend was calling the hospital to check if he was there, but the hospital couldn’t tell her.
Then her friend gave her the phone, and since she was listed as an emergency contact they confirmed that he was in fact there.
What happened was that he had a bad nosebleed and had his brother give him a ride to the hospital, but didn’t tell her and of course he was an older guy who never has his phone turned on.
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My sister once had a patient who had apparently led one hell of an interesting life, and at different points had been a doctor, a lawyer and a priest, so aside from his resume sounding like the setup to some kind of joke, he also knew his way around all of the ins and outs of how the whole system worked, but being a patient in a nursing home with probably the early stages of dementia setting in, he wasn’t always acting rationally, and apparently it was an absolute nightmare for the staff and his family to navigate the changes he was making to his paperwork while he was there.
I’m not sure if you know the answer but since you work in 911 dispatch, how does it work if a person is a suspect in a crime or something? I assume if they would notify your parents/immediate family?
It is a bit outside of my area of expertise, but if I understand what you’re asking, the police usually aren’t going to just call up your family and say “hey, your adult child just did a crime and we thought you should know”
Unless there’s a good reason for them to do that. If they suspect that you may be a danger to your family, they’ll of course advise them and give them some more details.
Or if they’re trying to locate you, they’ll probably contact your family, but usually they’re going to keep details vague, they probably won’t come right out and say “we think your kid just robbed a gas station o do you know where he is so we can arrest him?” They’ll probably keep it to something more like “he may have been present during a robbery and we have some questions for him”
But of course every situation, police department, individual officer, etc. is unique, so I won’t claim that there’s absolutely no situation where that might happen.
They absolutely would not notify your close loved ones if you are suspected of a crime. That would be the same as them telling you to get out of town before they find you
Healthcare workers are very sued to dealing with lots of different family arrangements and high risk situations. They won’t contact anyone unless they are asked to, or in an emergency and they are the listed contact, or there is no listed contact.
If you specifically ask them not to, they certainly won’t.
Depends if they are still the caretaker as far as i know.
@Grimreaper@sopuli.xyz, looking for souls to take discreetly? 👀
Unless you somehow give them the contact info, I don’t see how they could.
The last few times I’ve been in the specifically asked me “If anyone asks, can we tell them you’re here?”
I’d imagine the default would be silence.
Not necessarily.
Maybe if they’re programmed as an emergency contact in their phone or something
not unless the person is incapacitated (unconscious) and is at risk of dying
WWell, I doubt the hospital staff is just gonna take your phone away from you just because you’re 18 and start looking through it. I figured that was a given.
