Re: For Tom, about having someone with you

[Guest guest]

Tom, it's not about dealing with visitors. It's about dealing with

the hospital personnel.

I was most fortunate in this. My doc does most of his surgeries in

the same hospital, he has his patients check in to a pediatric ward

where the nurses have worked with him before and know what's up; post

op the patients go to a special post-anesthesia recovery ward where

the nurses also know what to expect and are right nearby, just in

case. So he's got the system all checked out, and his patients mostly

do have easy recoveries, I think. (He's also a heckuva nice guy, and

the nurses are crazy about him, which helps, too!)

But there have been incredible tales of some hospitals' staffs who

know nothing, apparently, about what's going on. Nurses who walked in

and tried to take a temp in the mouth of a wired shut patient. Nurses

who tried to answer the call bell over a speakerphone, and then got

grumpy when the patients, wired shut, couldn't make an intelligible

reply. Nurses who were " too busy " to tend to the ice properly -- and

one nurse who, incredibly, used heat on a patient immediately post

op, instead of the ice the surgeon had ordered.

So it's a good idea, unless you KNOW what's gonna happen and that the

nurses will be available and willing, to have someone who's clued in

be with you. Someone who's clued in and CAN SPEAK. Can get up and go

get the meds, or the ice packs or whatever you need, or keep worrying

the nurses until they do. Not trying to scare anybody, and my nurses

were all most wonderful, but just suggesting.

Cammie

> With all of your last minute changes in appts I am surprised you

are

> staying sane, good for YOU! Yeah I figured 2 or 3 days in the

> hospital. My wife may stay with me the first night, we'll see. I

> don't really expect anyone visiting as that would be quite a 2 hour

> or so drive there and then the same back.

>

> So now you are going to be off 3 weeks? Ah the life of a

recruiter,

> what do you recruit?

>

[Guest guest]

Cammie,

Let's not forget that today's hospitals have specialists for

everything, and that the RN is much more of a mananager and dispenser

of medications than in the past. Hospitals today have a low wage

person to do most things; transport patients back and forth, get ice,

take vital signs every 4 hours, etc. Many of these duties were once

nursing duties. The RN today isn't so much a caregiver, as a manager

of these lower wage employees.

When I had my surgery last month I interacted CONSTANTLY with the

nurse's aide who got my ice, requested the meds from the RN, helped

me get up to the bathroom the first few times, etc. The first

surgery, it was my wife who did most of these things. With the

second, she went home and made them do it.

Dammit

> > With all of your last minute changes in appts I am surprised you

> are

> > staying sane, good for YOU! Yeah I figured 2 or 3 days in the

> > hospital. My wife may stay with me the first night, we'll see.

I

> > don't really expect anyone visiting as that would be quite a 2

hour

> > or so drive there and then the same back.

> >

> > So now you are going to be off 3 weeks? Ah the life of a

> recruiter,

> > what do you recruit?

> >

[Guest guest]

Dammit, I do know about such matters, as well as that most nurses

these days are in short supply, underpaid and overworked, at least

around here. To the point that recruiters have been really aggressive

here in hiring them for short-term stints in other parts of the

country at, to them, whopping fees. (Some of my best friends are

nurses!) (;~>) And all of mine were truly splended, as I tried my

best to point out.

BUT. I don't see why patients should have been through those bad

experiences I mentioned, and some have. I don't care who does the

tending, actually, as long as it's someone who knows what he or she

needs to know, can do the job and is responsive, rather than snippy

or oblivious.

I believe that everybody who tended me, except for the transporters

who hauled me around, was an RN. I dunno whether that's why I got

such excellent care; perhaps so.

But I have heard too many tales of patients being left at the mercy

of untrained, apparently uncaring attendants ever again to let

anybody I love stay overnight in a hospital for anything serious

without having SOMEONE there to act protective if it's needed.

(Believe me, you don't want to hear some of the horror stories that

have happened in my family in local hospitals.) I am not alone in

these experiences, and I hope nobody here (or anywhere else) has any

more of them. But experience outweighs hope, for me, in this case. To

me it would be inexcusible to leave a patient who can't speak without

a functional response to a call button, or to try to take an oral

temp, and insist on it, with a patient who's wired shut. (If there

really is a way to do that, I'm certainly willing to stand corrected.

But I can't imagine it.)

And maybe those folks also gave you a bit of special care because you

have an in with one of their colleagues! Or because you're a nice guy.

C.

> Cammie,

>

> Let's not forget that today's hospitals have specialists for

> everything, and that the RN is much more of a mananager and

dispenser

> of medications than in the past. Hospitals today have a low wage

> person to do most things; transport patients back and forth, get

ice,

> take vital signs every 4 hours, etc. Many of these duties were

once

> nursing duties. The RN today isn't so much a caregiver, as a

manager

> of these lower wage employees.

>

> When I had my surgery last month I interacted CONSTANTLY with the

> nurse's aide who got my ice, requested the meds from the RN, helped

> me get up to the bathroom the first few times, etc. The first

> surgery, it was my wife who did most of these things. With the

> second, she went home and made them do it.

>

> Dammit