Context: Trainees (medical students and residents) work in association with a "Supervising Prescriber" who is the authorizing provider for orders and some documentation.
While it is usually obvious to trainees who their supervising prescriber is, there are times when trainees may need to override default selections and manually identify an authorizing prescriber.
Answer: A supervising prescriber (physician) supervises another physician for some aspect of care provision. Trainees and some other clinicians (e.g., clinical assistants) are licensed to care for patients only while under the supervision of another fully licensed physician. The term "Authorizing Prescriber" is synonymous in most Connect Care workflows.
The authorizing prescriber for a trainee is the physician accountable for the trainee's actions when orders are signed. By default, this is the patient's attending prescriber for emergency department and admitted patients and the patient's encounter provider for outpatients.
There are a few situations where the default attending or encounter provider as authorizer may not be appropriate. A trainee should consider which prescriber (not a higher level trainee, but the fully qualified physician on service or call) should be informed of critical or late-reporting results for inpatients, and test results for outpatients. That is who the trainee is acting on behalf of.
In the case of a trainee working on a consulting service in hospital or in the emergency department, it may be more appropriate for the consulting prescriber to be responsible for follow up of some investigations. This authorizing provider can be manually substituted at the time of placing orders.
The supervising prescriber is NOT the resident training program director, a more senior trainee, or some other physician not directly accountable for the clinical care that the trainee is providing at the time an order is entered.
The supervising prescriber is NOT the resident training program director, a more senior trainee, or some other physician not directly accountable for the clinical care that the trainee is providing at the time an order is entered.