Too-weak-for-the-Pit gripes from a hospital volunteer

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
41

At my hospital, when a patient gets to the floor, it’s required that an RN gets a medical and social history and physical assessment within the first 4 hours. That the ER has already done so is irrelevant, for some reason. if the patient comes up at 4:00, this surprisingly does not mean that the nurse has until 8:00 - they go off shift at 7:00 and are expected to have completed the admission. It sucks, I know it does, but it’s do the work or be fired.

Being a hospital RN is hard, to be sure, but it has it’s own rewards. Many patients are very grateful, understanding, lovely people, and I feel fulfilled supporting them in difficult times. I also try to remember that a hospital stay is just that - a difficult time. When things don’t go fantastically for the patient, I try to remember that it’s not my fault that life is painful/challenging/frightening for them right now, and it’s not their fault that they’re less than thrilled to see me.

42

I was once one of those people who was put in a room at 3:00 a.m. after a 6 hour wait in the ER (where the medical and social history forms were indeed filled out before moving me to my room). And they absolutely disrupted the other person in the room because they thought I was contagious (like C-Diff contagious which is apparently very serious) but someone didn’t get the memo until I had already been assigned the room. So they put me in, and then had to spend 20 minutes persuading her to please get up and get in the chair so they could move her to another room.

Luckily I was mobile so when it got loud outside (they don’t even try to be quiet but I’m not blaming them, they work 12-hour shifts), I could get up, drag my IV with me to the door and shut it. And I had earplugs.

Just please tell me what the difference in my bloodwork will be now, from the last time you took 4 vials of it an hour ago? Was there even enough time for whatever you’re pumping into me to actually kick in?

43

I like nurses. I love good nurses. Good nurses absolutely rock. They prevent amazing amounts of human suffering.

What I’d mini-rant about of relevance is whoever designed hospital equipment to go BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! until a nurse comes and does something to it, if whatever it’s going BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! about is so not-critical that nurses regularly and safely ignore it for long periods. Is “noise pollution” even a thing people talk about any more, or not since the 1970s? That BEEP! right there is noise pollution. As a getter of migraines, noise pollution is not just an annoyance to me.

Incidentally, as a getter of migraines even in hospitals while there for other crap, like various major surgeries, I would like to thank the nurses for taking migraines seriously when all I got from the doctors I was begging to help me was blank looks and shrugs. Look, doc, migraine drugs (at least the ones I take) are not a fun high. When I tell you the migraine hurts worse than the surgical site, I’m not trying to fuck with you.

44

I got to the point that I could see when the issue was an occlusion, and I’d just tell my Mom to straighten out her arm (she had an IV in the crook of her arm and kept forgetting to keep it straight) and I pressed the button to clear it myself. The nurses had no problems with me doing that. Given that it went off about 4 times an hour, I can see why.

45

She had to get up and into a chair before they could move her? As in she was going to another bed in another room? That must make moving very stressful indeed. Under the NHS in Britain a patient gets a bed when they arrive on a ward and thereon it’s the bed that gets moved, along with the patient and all her goods and chattels. They even take you in your bed down to the operating theatre and put you back in it for recovery. It’s a system I’ve come to appreciate :slight_smile:

46

I’m not a medical professional of any kind, but I’ve been told by people who are that there’s a good reason why a person gets asked the same stuff over and over, and why sometimes tests are repeated. It’s a cross-check against errors. What if the ER person wrote something down wrong? Or misunderstood an answer? Or a chart got switched? Or any one of lots of things that can go wrong even if 99% of the time everything is fine.

47

True. I can think of several other reasons:

  1. I am responsible for you. I’m not going to gamble your health that the person who wrote down “NKA” in the ER really asked you if you’re allergic to drugs *and *latex *and *bananas *and *shellfish. I’m going to ask you myself.

  2. I am responsible for my nursing license. In my state, I HAVE TO perform my own assessment on every patient. If I don’t and I miss something important, my license can be taken away and I won’t be able to feed my babies. “But the chart said…!” is not a valid legal defense.

  3. Sometimes people forget. Sometimes a slightly different wording of a question prompts a new response. You’d be surprised how many people this happens to: “Have you ever been in the hospital?” “No.” “Have you ever had a major illness?” “No.” “Have you ever had surgery?” “No.” “What’s this scar here from?” “Oh.. I had my appendix out when I was sixteen.” …And I assume they did it in your living room since it was such a minor appendix removal? :dubious: :smiley:

  4. Sometimes a patient who didn’t trust the last three people enough to tell the truth will tell me the truth. Or sometimes they’ll lie to me, too, only to tell me the truth two days later. Drugs and alcohol are big ones here, of course. But people lie about all sorts of things, for reasons only they understand.

  5. Sometimes changes in the answer indicate an important shift in your health status. The most obvious one here is why everyone keeps asking you what your name is, what year it is and who the President of the US is. That’s a standardized questionnaire to assess your mental status. I’ll ask it at least once a shift, even while we laugh over it. Without your answers, I cannot honestly mark “Oriented X3” in the chart. If you answered it all correctly at admission but now you’re stumbling over the President’s name, I’m going to check and see what’s gone wrong. Maybe you aren’t getting enough oxygen, maybe your blood sugar is high, maybe your morphine is too generous. A slight change in mental status can alert a nurse to a whole lot of problems.

48

It’s also hard to deal with patients who have ALZ or other memory problems. They won’t remember their birth date, what they’re having done, how old they are, etc.

I just came back from volunteering this morning and we heard numerous complaints, as always, about the parking lot. It fills up very quickly, many spaces are reserved for this and that, and people end up parking across the street at the park or around the block. There isn’t even enough space for all those with disability placards. Someone needs to designate more of those. There is absolutely no way to expand the existing space. The same goes for the waiting room and pretty much anything else inside.

Otherwise, we had some very nice, positive, and even fun folks come in and joke around. That’s always a good thing.

49

Yeah, and I had to get up every time I needed to go do a test (CAT scan, MRI, etc.). I had to either get in another bed, or get in a wheelchair. Even when my gall bladder was removed. And I had a constant IV at the time, which was not attached to the bed, so I had to drag it with me to the bathroom along with my heart monitor. The other person didn’t. (I think her problems were more mental based on the conversation she was having with the nurse.)

As for the other answers, point taken. :slight_smile: I’m also glad they asked me my name and date of birth every 5 minutes, because I’ve heard the horror stories of someone getting the wrong surgery.

50

Wow, that would never fly around here. I was over at the hospital this morning and they offer valet parking (done by senior citizen volunteers, so I’m not sure if that’s a good thing ;)), there were 3 people in the PT waiting room, and they got me in and out early. Granted, I think part of this is due to their major competition in this area being Mayo Clinic, where patient care is almost a religion, but it’s still nice.

51

Doesn’t it depend on where the hospital is? I mean, for example, the Royal London Hospital (in London, England, since the name doesn’t necessarily make it obvious) doesn’t have a car park at all and has very few car-parking spaces in the vicinity, none of which are free. Putting a car-park in is definitely not an option. Some city hospitals in the US must have similar problems.

And if there are budgetary restraints then it’d be more difficult to justify spending money on parking spaces over money on, say, dialysis units.

52

Yes, that’s why I said it would never fly around here. I live in a very rural area and my hospital is in a small town. Location is also relevant with regard to Mayo. Any hospital in this area is in direct competition with the Mayo Clinic, so they have to up the ante when it comes to things like comfort and convenience. Facilities play a huge role in this market.

53

And for many complaints, there is absolutely nothing the volunteers, nurses, or even doctors can do about it. The administration may read your complaint, but their bottom line is money.

The psych ward my husband works on has gone through three charge nurses in the last nine months. The doctors write orders to have certain patients in line of sight at all times - then the administration bitches at the charge nurse for scheduling enough staff to cover all the line of sight patients. Many of these patients are extremely violent, others will self-harm.

They asked my husband to take the charge nurse position - he laughed at them. He is not a full-time employee of the hospital, but works PRN (as needed). He works full time at a higher hourly wage than the “full time” staff but doesn’t have benefits. (Neither of us have health insurance. We looked at the feasiblity of him going full time so we would have insurance, but the costs were prohibitive. For some reason, they don’t charge for dependent insurance by the number of dependents. If the employee’s insurance is $X per month, dependent insurance is $X x 3, no matter if you have one dependent or 5. With the pay cut he’d be taking to go full time, we couldn’t afford the insurance.)

54

Anything done by senior citizen volunteers might not always be good. My aunt was visiting my uncle and it was dark and she got run over by the bus driver (some old dude, I won’t mince words), and dragged a few feet before the guy realized it. She ended up on the same floor with her husband.

So no, it’s not a good thing to have senior people driving people anywhere.

55

We have younger folks to do that. :wink:

56

Fair enough. I just meant to add a possible reason why it might not work in the OP’s area, thus it might not be a valid patient complaint. An understandable one, sure, but not necessarily one that can be sorted.

57

One more note to folks coming in for surgery:

When you’re asked to come two hours before the surgery time, it’s not a two-hour window. It’s TWO HOURS BEFORE the scheduled time. Yes, you had your pre-op and registration done some time ago, but you still need to be prepped for surgery: get a gown, get an IV going, get that bed, the anesthesiologist may want to check on you, perhaps you need a little something to calm you down, the nurses have to check several times to make sure you’re you, you’ve got the correct info on your wristband, and that what you’re having is the right surgery, the correct limb, the right part. Safety measures and such.

When you mosey in really late, it makes things quite difficult. In the meantime, the folks in Surgery will have called the front desk asking if you’ve come in yet.

That’s all.

58

I totally understand this, but boy, do I wish they’d just GIVE YOU THE APPOINTMENT TIME THAT YOU HAVE TO BE THERE! A 10am appointment where you have to be there 15 minutes early is not a 10am appointment, it’s a 9:45am appointment.

I realize that it might be 10am for the doctor, but it’s not rocket science to write 10am in the doctor’s calendar and then hand you an appointment card that says “9:45am.”

Between Sick Relative and I, I’ve been going to a LOT of doc visits lately. Every appointment/lab/procedure seems to have a different guideline. One doc has small signs all over his office saying “Please show up 15 minutes before your appointment time” but nobody every actually mentions it to us - we just have to remember to be there 15 minutes early. Other places tell you when they call to confirm. Other places have it printed on the cards.

Note to anyone who schedules appointments: Life would be easier for all of us if you’d just tell us what time you actually want us to show up!

59

My mom’s friend G. was just in this hospital recently for about 8 days. One of her roommates had eight family members in for a loud birthday party (it wasn’t even the patient’s birthday but someone else’s) that went on for quite a while and included a small child. G. told the nurses that this was against regulations and it also wasn’t fair for all this commotion to be going on while she was trying to recover from a surgery with complications and hemorrhaging. As usual, nothing got done.

Memo to nurses and security and, what the hell, the administration too:
Why do you bother to have visitor age and number limits or any policies at all if you don’t bother to enforce them?

Those “Be quiet–our patients need their rest” signs outside the doors are clearly a joke.

60

Between my husband and me, we’ve had procedures in 6 different hospitals over the last 28 years. The quality of care has been all over the place, but in general, it seems when it’s good, it’s really great, and when it’s bad, it really sucks.

Most recently, he’s had 5 surgeries on his spine - 3 on his neck, 2 on his lower back - at 3 different hospitals. The first hospital was fabulous, but the surgeon sucked, so when a variant on the original problem resurfaced, we drove almost 2 hours to a different hospital and a different doctor, both on the fabulous end of the scale. A few years later, he needed his first lower back surgery and to spare us the long drive, he picked a doctor and hospital closer to home. The doctor was OK, the hospital was the suckiest yet, mainly because the floor nurses were either lazy or incompetent or they forgot the only patient they had on that one hall. I hate to think what would have happened if I hadn’t been there to wake them up occasionally. So when he had to have #5, it was back to the 2 hour drive, and the great facility.

Just for the record, we’re don’t expect 5-star hotel service, but when there’s only one other patient on the floor, we do expect a fairly quick answer to the call button. I didn’t appreciate having to hunt down a nurse when my husband was having a serious pain issue.

Now that we’re both creeping into the geriatric range, I dread the thought of the sucky hospital being the closest. Our choices become sticking with our local doctors and hoping the hospital staff will get better or finding doctors farther away at hospitals with better reputations. Or we could just not get sick…

Anyway, great nurses and great hospital staffs are truly treasures beyond measure. I make sure to give them excellent reviews when the survey forms come to us.

And the volunteers at the great hospital were just aces - especially when I was fretting away the hours in the waiting area. There was one woman who sat and talked to me for about 40 minutes - she was a gem.