I am starting to get to the point where I feel comfortable in a hospital. I used to have panic attacks just being in a hospital, or a doctor's office. I have gotten to where I am not a basket case when I smell the stench of disinfectant, and that hard to describe smell of a hospital. It is there, in every one of them, and it is disturbing.
I am sitting here in the waiting room of another hospital I have never been in before. This is supposed to be a great one, you know, one of those hospitals that other hospitals send patients to. There is nothing new or unusual about this place. The nurses and doctors and technicians, they can tell a difference about this building. To me, it is just bigger than most.
It has the same difficulties that all the other hospitals have, it takes freaking forever for anything to happen. There is a huge gap in communications between the staff and the patients/family. There is this sense that the patients/family will not understand, so don't try, it just pisses them off. There is the equal sense that the nurses/doctors can't explain it so someone understands, so don't ask, it just pisses them off.
It is so bad, most patients are afraid to ask persistent questions or refuse to settle for answers they don't understand. They are prisoners to that bed, and totally dependent on this staff. They know who pays the price for pissing the staff off. It scares most people spitless to challenge doctors/nurses. Some of them develop a perverse superiority complex because of that. Not all, not even most, but the few are bad enough to ensure the masses stay in line.
I hate to write that, like there is a battleground. Right, there is supposed to be this innate trust that the doctors do what they do because they want to help people, the Hyppocratic Oath and all like that. There is supposed to be a sacred bond between patient and Doctor, that the patient is willing to submit their wellbeing, their very life, to the treatment prescribed. It is supposed to be a holistic, St Elmo's kind of thing about it all.
Instead, it is pretty much an antiseptic, emotionless interaction. I suppose they care, some of them even show it. Some of them are even pleasant. But, somehow, the instruction for generations of doctors and nurses has been to maintain this clinical detatchment. As our science progressed, our interactions and communication suffered. "We will just have to wait for results." Nothing about understanding that you still hurt like hell, or that we will try to do more to make you comfortable until the results are back. Nothing about what good results would be or look like. Nothing that indicates a genuine understanding that there is a sick, likely scared, human being in this situation.
As the economic constraints increased patient to staff ratios, this became even more intensely taught, so as to minimize time of interaction (wasted time to the insurance companies paying the bills), and increase the throughput to the latest fancy machine that exposes you to radiation, electromagnetic fields, ultrasonic waves, and other things that we avoid anywhere else in the world.
Want to complete flummox a doctor? Ask them if the X-ray they are ordering, because you have not had one yet, is going to be clinically worth the risk of radiation exposure. Want to disturb them completely? Ask them if they know the relative amount of dose, and what percentage of non-ionizing exposure allowed for the year you will exhaust with the procedure. Most will probably cut and run like hell, terrified. "THIS ONE KNOWS STUFF!!! STAY AWAY!!! STAY AWAY!!!"
Unfortunately, knowing stuff is seen as challenging the authority of the Doctor, and wasteful of their time in explaining. Don't we suffering masses understand that the moments we steal from them to gain understanding could be the moments that spell life or death for another patient? I honestly think that is what goes through most of their heads.
Nurses are just as bad, but mostly because they are overwhelmed. It is their jobs to deal with the patients and their needs. They have to interact closely. They have more patients than they can really attend to adequately. They have less tools they are allowed to utilize without asking. Almost everything they do, they are required to get permission first. Imagine you have seven kindergarten students to take care of, and you have to call each of their parents before you let them color, or paint or go to the bathroom. And, you can't do it in any kind of order, you have to be doing it all at one time.
Some nurses just suck. Some doctors just suck. Some patients just suck. Some situations just suck out loud. That is not a thing that can be remedied. It is part of the human condition. But, the next great medical breakthrough will not be a cure for cancer, or even a cure for the common cold. The next great medical breakthrough is going to be reconnecting doctors/nurses to patients at a human level. We will somehow get rid of the constant threat of lawsuits. We will get rid of the cash based medicine we have today. We will break the stranglehold that Big Medicine has on the system.
Then, doctors will spend more time trying to heal, than to treat. They will spend more time designing care plans than dictating orders. They will do the tests required, not all that insurance will allow. They will have a deep, vested interest in the health of their patients, because they are people they have gotten to know, not just charts that add up on their rating.
Then, nurses will be able to care for people, instead of monitor people. They will be compassionate, because they are connected. They will be trusted, because they are worthy of it. They will be partners in the process, not go-bots only permitted to execute the exact words written. They will have a deep, vested interest in the health of their patients, because they are people they have gotten to know, not just diagnosis with room numbers.
Then, patients will understand that no doctor knows everything. They will be trusting, and work to do what is needed to get the result they want. They will know that there are not pills to cure some things. They will understand that health and illness are things that are sometimes only God can control, and won't hold those that are not God responsible for not fixing it. They will have a deep, vested interest in their own health, because they trust their caregivers, as they are people they have gotten to know, not just a lab coat that speaks a mysterious language.
I think this place I am sitting is is probably as good as they get within 300 miles. Maybe more. But, it is handicapped like the most backwoods, rundown rural clinic. There is a people disconnect in medicine. The smarter we get, the more miserable we are trying to get better. We have made it possible to keep people alive to a much greater age and more fulfilling life, but to do it is to go through a process that often feels like the Spanish Inquisition, without all the side benefits. (Yeah, that was sarcastic)
It shouldn't be this way, and it shouldn't require an effort akin to going to war, to ensure the best outcome for your family member. It is a screwed up thing that is better all the time, and worse by the second. Weird that the thing that should have us most connected, should be most tied to our better angels, has become a thing of turmoil, anxiety and fury.
If you don't believe in a Devil, if you don't understand the role that evil takes in the world, spend a day or two around a place like this. Where we do have proof of God's grace and Angels, we see such a clear indication of the role of Satan. We get to choose who we will obey in the end. Who are you going to choose? It starts with us.
GLYASDI
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