What happens when a patient has problem after surgery?

Question

What I mean is does their doctor come in or does an emergency physician or an on call specialist who works at the hospital

Answer 1

It depends.  If it's an emergency, obviously they are not going to wait to treat the patient until the surgeon can be called in, or the patient's personal physician.  Eventually, if there was a problem, of course the surgeon would be notified, and if it was something that required another operation, they or another surgeon would operate.  If it wasn't a surgical problem, a specialist in that problem would likely be called in.

Post-surgically, a patient usually spends some time in a recovery room or a PACU (a Post-Anesthesia Care Unit).  If they had a problem there, they might be treated by the anesthesiologist or a surgeon or a medicine or critical care doctor who might be rotating there.

After the PACU, the patient is admitted to a service--surgery, or medicine with surgery serving as a consult, or to a SICU (surgical intensive care unit) or other specialty care unit, depending on what level of care they were likely to need and what their medical issues were.  The doctors working on that floor would initially handle any post-surgical complication, but again, the surgeon would be informed.

The one type of doctor that probably wouldn't have much of a place in this whole scenario would be an emergency medicine doctor.  Intensivists and trauma surgeons, who do work in emergency rooms, might be called in, though.