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Jan Blackburn
While everyone else is Black Friday shopping, we are once again in the Emergency Room. While I spent fifty years working in these settings, I find myself less than amused to be on the receiving end of care.
In fact, I find anything to do with healthcare these days to be loathsome! You hurry to the Emergency Room, only to have to wait to see a specialist for weeks and months. The time ticks as the ill person becomes weaker and less able to care for themselves. See another doctor, more bloodwork, more tests, no answers-only more questions, more referrals and more delays.
Weeks after the original injury, our patient can barely move, isn’t eating or drinking sufficiently and has had little or no instruction as to what activity is allowed, so we do nothing, hoping to prevent another fall, only to find that weakness causes us to fall more.
Yet another fall has landed us back in the Emergency Room…will THIS be the time when an admission can occur, with subsequent treatments and hydration and possible physical therapy to nourish and strengthen our patient? It is well known that we try to do everything outpatient these days, but the delays have become so detrimental to patient outcomes.
When I began my nursing career, patients who were admitted saw specialists in the hospital during their inpatient stays. The needed tests were often done while the patient was still in the hospital, eliminating the need for multiple trips back and forth to see those same doctors and do the same tests.
In those days an elderly patient who lived at home and needed a procedure but needed assistance with the prep could be admitted in advance and receive assistance from nurses and aides who could monitor and prepare the patient appropriately instead of making them tough it out at home and probably not be able to prepare adequately enough to even complete the procedure.
It seems the more we have advanced in technology, the less compassion and direction our patients sometimes receive. This patient’s weakness, anorexia, muddled thinking and additional falls should have been enough to raise an eyebrow and consider an admission.
Now today, yet another fall has landed us in the ER again, this time with a fractured hip. The world hangs in the balance as we wait to hear what lies ahead. I find myself wondering if someone had listened carefully and saw what was happening if it would have made a difference. I find myself wondering if the fact that our patient is nearly ninety years ago had any bearing. Would her complaints have been more valid if she were younger and less of a risk?
One would think that with all the hype about preventative care, this might have been a consideration. In this case, an ounce of prevention might have been worth thousands of dollars of care that this surgery will entail.
Again, not enough answers and way too many questions. The mood here is blacker than the night sky….
‘Til Next Time!
Mrs. B.
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