Rest and Hospitals

In the early 80's my grandfather went into a hospital for one of those "routine check ups". He hated Hospitals his entire life and avoided them at all costs. He ended up having a stroke and died. Talk about stressful!

 

My bigger problem when I was in the hospital was dealing with all the well-wishers. Even the President of the Hospital came by to say hello and see how I was doing. And it seemed like I had my own nurse. They even refrained from putting anyone else in the room with me (the room was a double).

I guess when your Dad is on the executive committee at the hospital, people feel like they need to make sure you're well taken care of.

The intern (actually, he was just a Med Student. He wasn't an intern yet) that was keeping up with me was a little odd, too. He had a PhD in Music and had been a professional musician for many years before deciding to go to Medical School.

But I didn't have any trouble resting at the hospital. Even with all the people coming in and out, I was still able to sleep at about my regular schedule at night. (But it is very hard to get me stressed about anything, really. And I was just there for an appendectomy, hardly anything to get worked up about).

 

This one hits home on all kinds of levels with me, so I'll comment.

I was diagnosed with high blood pressure... err... on a nuclear level...lol.. 200/145. Yes, my head was on the verge of exploding. They kept me in for rest & observation, but of course they prescribed medication while I was resting. It took 4 hours in the ER to bring my pressure down and of course I was woozy from the meds. Had they just given me the first dose of the medication and patted me on the back and sent me home, I'd be a dead man.

A friend of the family was admitted into the hospital complaining of chest pains. They took an EKG, and the doctor said "aaah, it's just gas" and sent him home. He died of a heart attack on his couch while his 9 or so year-old son watched the following day. Had the doctor kept him for observation, they could've prevented that or at least had people around when it happened. But then, according to my mom, any fool could've read that EKG and noticed there was something wrong and the man should've been kept for further testing...

Oftentimes they call it "rest" or "observation", but many of those times, they're actually giving you something or watching you over a period of hours to see what things like your blood pressure, temperature, etc. are doing. For example, when you hop into the dr.'s offices with very elevated blood pressure, it could be due to several factors. They're just watching to see if that high bp is a "regular" reading or a spike/anomaly that (un)luckily showed up...

I've got nothing against them keeping me around... heck... some of those nurses are cute anyway...

 

There could be worse things than hovering over you, believe it or not. My mom was in the hospital because she had to get her jawbone reconstructed. Her mouth was wired shut. No one checked on her all night and she kept feeling like she couldn't breathe. She could hit the call button, but of course couldn't talk to tell them what was wrong, so they'd just ignore it no matter how many times she tried it. She wished she hadn't told my dad to go home. It was scary. If it were me, I think I would have caused some damage or broken something or done something else they just could not ignore. If that's possible. Kind of scary how the most helpless people in our society get treated sometimes.

 

My problem with hospitals is they are more concerned with procedure than with patients. Combine this with laziness and you get bad health care. The nurses will typically dope everyone up at the beginning of their shift so they don't have to deal with anyone. Then they do stupid things like wake you up to give you a sleeping pill. My advice, stay home.

 

Hospital personnel have to be overly concerned with procedure because America is so litigious. People will sue at the drop of a hat. I've known doctors who were sued for trading surgeries with someone else (sort-of like trading nights off).

Add in that if procedure isn't followed, it can sometimes be dangerous to the patient, too.

 

I don't want to downplay anyone's personal experience because I know they are all accurate stories, but I did hear that the study that Jeff is referring to used a very liberal definition of cause of death. The number of deaths that they were attributing to hospital error was very high and that a lot of the deaths were from arguable causes.

For instance, they would count all deaths that were caused by infections as opposed to all preventable deaths that were caused by infections. Would you really count the death of an AIDS patient due to infection if all standard medical practices were observed? It is hard to tell for a lot of situations, but the study shows the absolute worst possible picture of medical care.

Check out the graph... one day the only cause of death will be medical mistakes.