Posted on 02/27/2010 6:07:23 PM PST by BykrBayb
I think theres some confusion as to what alive is when it comes to donors.
I think you’re right. It’s not very clear what really dead means when talking about organ donation. Perhaps more people would donate if the issue were clarified.
Totally Agree! If I hadn’t been there to listen to the doctor, my mom would not have remembered ANY of it. The drugs they gave her (liquid oxycodone) made her incredibly goofy, and she babbled on about all kinds of things she didn’t remember. She also had a bad reaction from the dilaudid they gave her the first day, got a rash all over her entire body. I had to take her to her regular doctor on Friday to see about the rash, and was the only one who could give him the entire time line of what happened, etc. Mom didn’t have a clue. She will be 76 this year, and if she ever needs major surgery again, you can bet I’ll be with her the whole time, even if I have to sleep on the floor! Especially after this story, as she is an organ donor. So am I, and now I’m thinking about changing that status, after the advice given by someone upthread!
Heh.. I have had sooo many bad experiences at our local “hospital” and I use that term loosely. I reallllly want to be able to say something good about them, but I can’t. It’s one nightmare experience after another, just starting with the apathetic personalities of most of the employees there, then we go on to the emergency rooms, no excuse for blood on the trays from someone before us, trash on the floor, etc... If it was a hospital in the middle of Detroit, that might fly, but I just see no excuse for it here, especially when we go to the hospital hr. and half away, and it is spotless, you are checked on constantly, things run on time, etc. etc. etc.....
And therein lies the rub (for me, anyhow) that the posters who think this is perfectly fine, or, that they don’t want to be on life support, blah blah blah, completely miss, or conveniently miss, -— this is about someone who is cared about. Be it my mother, son, brother, etc., I care about them, and I will exhaust every effort to make sure a fatal mistake is not made. Further, if Teri Schiavo was my sister, mother, aunt, etc.. I feel it is MY decision to take care of her, NOT the state! MY decision on how her quality of life is, if I am willing to spend my time caring lovingly for her, as long as she breathes. /rant off...
As someone who has worked extensively with medical records, I can tell you that this law isn't always followed to a T, nor is it practical, but if you don't stand up for your rights in this case, they will continue there lackadaisical attitude towards this law in other cases ("they are always doing that"). So although, you personally, may not be affected, it is the principle of the matter for others down the road. Believe you me, if the medical records department is not called on it now, they will continue in it's practice.
Even though I’m a nurse, I did not know that the MR department MUST keep a record of every time my records have been requested.
If/when the risk manager calls me back on Monday, I’m going to ask for that list.
The first link is a bunch of gobbily gook, but it is the part of the law that states you are entitled to an “accounting” of disclosures that the “covered entity” (ie Hospital).
The second link is to the Wikipedia article that this info was found in. It is under the Privacy Rule section.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_Insurance_Portability_and_Accountability_Act#cite_note-18
If my organs did not work well enough to keep me alive, then it is irresponsible to allow them to be put into someone else.
I knew it was strict, but didn’t realize HOW strict. Thanks.
My advise is not to put anything in writing, tell your family when they hear you are gone to offer the organs..
I suspect this kind of decision is made more than we know..
At my last job part of my duties was random auditing of medical records. As an RN I am sure you have heard the line of "not documented, not done". So that was my job. I would run a computer program of randomly selected medical records. I generally never even got a persons name, just the medical record number of a patient, and I would then look at the record and determine if the procedures billed for were actually recorded in the permanent record (ie if an EKG was billed, did we have the necessary documentation to back it up), or on the flip side, if I found documentation of an EKG being done, was it billed for.
Anyway, one day a patient called in and complained that someone at the facility must have disclosed her health information because her ex boyfriend knew she was pregnant, and she never told him. As with most clinics, we took this accusation extremely seriously, so the administrator ran an audit of who had accessed her file. My name came up so I was called in for a "meeting". Thankfully, my policy had always been to keep track of the records I audited. I did it by the med record #, so after digging I was able to prove that my access of said record was totally innocent.
I am sure, as an RN, you understand when I say that I could give a rat's AS* about any ones personal info. I see so much of it every day that nothing surprises me in terms of "unique". In fact I generally have absolutely no idea of a patients name, although it is there. Because I work in the abstract, and not personal care, one medical records looks like all the rest to me.
So much of our documentation was the legally required save our own butt stuff. Something like 43 pages for the RN admitting someone to the floor, for every Medicare patient, not to mention the other paperwork (dr orders, nursing assessment, RT, Dietary, personal possessions, treatment plan, X-rays, labs, meds, the whole shootin match.
Setting up TPN, irrigating a central line, restarting an IV, hanging piggybacks, changing out fluids, checking the NAs charting, fixing a blocked foley, calling for transport, documenting meals (the NAs were always busy after meals with bedpans and toileting), seeing who hadn’t had a BM for three days, checking on pain relief, giving narcotics, counting narcoticss, charting narcotics, *sheesh!* Working shortstaffed really sucked.
I’m glad I’m retired.
This is exactly why I will not put that I am an organ donor on my license. I told my parents that they can use my organs but not unless I am officially dead.
If we could extend this presumed consent to other donations, Goodwill could come in your house every spring and just take all the stuff you were probably going to donate during spring cleaning anyway. My neighbor didn’t tell me that she doesn’t want to donate her big screen TV to me. I guess that makes it mine.
This is exactly what I’ve done. I have no problem with someone getting my organs AFTER I’m dead, but I don’t want the hospital knowing that until I’m actually dead.
Wise man :)
Terrible. Florida again.
My brother is an attorney who specializes in estate planning and elder law, I’ve gone over every possibly scenario with him and my medical directives reflect my exact wishes, not some boilerplate nonsense pushed by the hospitals.
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