I work at a hospital now, and I have worked at another in a different region in the past. The other one I worked at, I was on the floors alot more than the one I'm at now, and on those floors that aren't ER-related, where the patients tend to come in an stay for a long time...believe it or not... it was usually the same people that were leaving and coming back (usually until we got the notice of expiration in the department..), and I do dearly feel for the people I got the chance to meet and talk to several times, but I always wondered why they would keep coming and coming, always same problems, same complications, it seriously irked me.. I'm aware of the patients need to hold up their end of the bargain, but at the same time, if they aren't being given the most substantial amount of information and guidance and advice to be able to properly and fully govern their situation, then it really comes off like cows that go back to a farm to be milked. :swear:
And also, at that hospital, it seemed like it took an act of congress to get people help whenever they were most in need. I remember having to help patients to do things like move about and get situated in their rooms, and lend an ear to their concerns about their treatment and complaints of nurses who would never come to their aid, or nurse aids who would take their sweet a** time about helping the people- and alot of times, I felt like I were in a mental institution of sorts, listening to several people scream and cry for help into the hallways, and the nurses just sit about like it's the norm, and claim the patient just wants attention/had been seen already/etc., etc... I think that part really has to do with older nurses who regurgitate their insufficient care and practices to the newcomers who digest it and see it as a norm too, and cut themselves off from caring or feeling about the patients who do this. IT's not just. I would ring the neck of any official who could just sit back and relax while my own family member might be calling for help- You NEVER know what could be going on, so what on EARTH makes something like that OK?
Anyway, I'm at another hospital and it's a bit better, sort of (I don't go down patient halls anymore, sooo.)... I find it quite horrific that we still charge the patients who pass for the instruments that had been used in attempt to save their lives. Ohhh, man. It really boggles me, and I have gotten into the habit of praying over the crash carts we send out (that they use on the patients who are coding under cardiac arrest and whatnot) And while alot of the staff seems to be hands on and in control of things, I feel like they generally only do enough to get by.... There's a great grand fog of the "I don't know"s lingering around this new hospital, and it's so uncomfortable, and it makes alot of the processes my department has to go through difficult. They seem to go about it all with no feelings of remorse for whatever actions executed. And the phlebotomist has told me stories of wrong medicines being distributed to the wrong patients (lortabs in the place of tylenols, nurses dismissing it, etc.) - And they have their own names and calls for items, and that makes it a thorn in the a** to talk with them, to try and get them (and ultimately the patient) what they need, without having been familiar with what they call the items in the first place. It feels like you have to be there for 3+ years to catch them in their lingo, and still some of the employees in my department have difficulties deciphering what it is they need.
A frustrating little place indeed. Interesting observations, nonetheless, and I always do what I can, and I do my damndest not to get in the way, whereas there isn't any room to get in any way. In these places, one ******** costs you a job. Atleast, that's what's constantly being shoved into my throat and burned into my eyes. Yo learn to be extremely attentive to detail, lest you catch a case of the "I don't know"s. razz
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