Asking too much from people that are inured to human pain and trauma. There are not enough people to take care of patients.
My wife is a nurse and she's swamped. Can't give the care people should get. If they spend too much time focusing on one patient others are ignored. It's not the people's fault. It's the fault of regulation and govt. control. Too much paperwork. It's the fault of lack of medical and nursing schools coupled with their monopoly on medical education.
Nursing schools TRY to drive students out. They claim it's to weed out the weak ones but it's more about money. If they can maintain their monopoly they can charge 30K/year for tuition.
There are many things wrong with going to hospital. You have to go there knowing the you will be expected, in this day and age, to be prepared to help yourself more than ever.
Does anyone have the ping list for the ‘children faces gnawed off by dogs’?
I had abdominal surgery about seven years ago and had to stay in the hospital about three days.
After a day or two, my bed sheets were stained with spilled food, etc. The place was so understaffed that an aide just dropped off new sheets on the chair next to my bed, but never came back to actually change them. I couldn’t stand it so I got up with the IV still attached to my arm and changed them myself.
Here in south florida a large percentage of the nurses are Haitian immigrants who barely speak english. I think most were laid off from the Motel 6 across the street from the hospital.
Sadly, Glenn’s experience isn’t unique. He and his wife have every reason to be upset. But what I detect is that he had no idea that people encounter this kind of medical “care” these days.
The way you deal with these kinds of things is to have an advocate at the patient’s side 24/7, especially if they are weak or in any way not mentally alert because of pain or meds or whatever. And that advocate has to view themselves as having a job to do - a demanding job - because the hospital staff for some reason doesn’t do it. It’s not just a thing of sitting by the bedside and encouraging the sick. It’s about being a major part of their care and recovery.
After being such an advocate for a family member, it made me wonder how many patients die in a hospital when no family/friends are there and the family never finds out it was because of negligence. Things like problems with breathing that goes undetected because staff don’t take the time to really and truly look at the patient and note changes in their condition.
I was in nursing school. One of over 500 applicants. 38 got in and only 12 graduated. I had the highest test scores in the class bar none, but because I was male, a clinical instructor targeted me and wrote me up for everything. (She was overheard by another student saying, “Men don’t belong in this profession.”) This is true, but hard to believe: The same instructor failed another student in her last hour when she turned off an IV machine when the alarm sounded. This girl went to nursing school for three years, and the instructor just said, “You’re a danger giving medication, go home.” In her last hour of her last day of clinicals!! In this program, if you fail, you are out for good. Even Medical doctors don’t face this kind of scrutiny. I suppose we could have sued, but when I realized what nurses have to do day in and day out, I decided that it wasn’t worth it. My wife made it through by the skin of her teeth, but she wishes she had chosen a different profession.