In which Twiggy discusses health care related things and nobody cares
Bah, so I wrote this long-ass thing yesterday, yes? I locked it because I wanted to keep editing it because I sound like a moron lolol, but then I realized that I'd sound like a moron anyway so whatever. UNLOCKING POWERS ACTIVATE.
To all the Torontonians around the friends list who may or may not have been reading the Star this week, I don't suppose you guys caught the column (updated today) written by Joe Fiorito that was essentially relating the story of this 81 year-old man, Ray Griffis, who-oh screw it, let's just quote it off the article (square brackets mine):
After a recent operation to remove a chunk of his colon, Ray Griffis was rushed [the first article said "hustled"] to the emergency room of North York General Hospital [where my aunt works].
He had been recuperating at home, but he reacted badly to the first round of chemotherapy and was hit with stomach troubles [diarrhea] and what felt like the flu.
It took a good three hours before he was seen, and then he was left alone in isolation in emergency. There, he endured several instances of stomach-churning helplessness; no toilet in that room; use your imagination.
Ray's circumstances were complicated by an almost aggressive lack of attention - the nurse posted outside his room ignored him when he waved for help.
Before I begin, I'd like to say that if you're actually gonna read this whole thing (which I doubt because it's long and doesn't really concern anybody), you might want to read it using your own layout rather than mine, seeing as I know that my font size is pretty damned small and otherwise a pain in the ass.
Well, the above (and I suppose all the other random quotes I'll be making in this post) are from the column he wrote today updating on this man's story. Those last two paragraphs elude to the tone of this article, but essentially Fiorito seemed to take it upon himself to passive-aggressively make NYGH sound like a huge douchebag filled with bitchy staff with this and the first column he wrote on Monday.
Sure, I might be biased, seeing as my aunt is a nurse in the emergency ward at NYGH and I hear a lot of stories from her, but the problem with opinion columns like Fiorito's here is that it's opinion and he has yet to present what the situation is like on the other side of the fence. While I don't plan on sending anything off to the Star about it, I figured I might as well post something almost meaningful and opinionated on LJ for once by responding to this. :D"
So I showed this article to my aunt, obviously, whose first reaction was, "DID THEY MENTION NAMES? MY NAME HAD BETTER NOT BE ON THERE EVEN THOUGH I HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH IT. D:"
My aunt is lol like that. But you know, after she sat down and read it, mostly she just sighed and laughed and sighed more.
Relating to how this man was put into isolation (where there are no toilets) when he had diarrhea, my aunt said that this was based on protocol. It doesn't make any sense and my aunt thinks it's retarded, but that's how it is, and because he's a chemo patient and his immune system may be weaker, usually such a patient would have been put into a room on their own for that reason too.
As for the nurse who ignored him when he waved for help to get to a bathroom while in isolation, Griffis said, "It became obvious she didn't want to help me when she turned away on her chair and acted like I didn't exist." Now that, my aunt thought was odd. She told me that generally speaking, at the very least, short of the ER going berserk, a nurse would come in and say, "Just give me a moment to finish up and I'll be right back for you" or something to that effect. Regardless of whether or not the nurse would actually remember/be able to come back around or not is a different story admittedly, but at the very least there is that courtesy given.
"I had feces all over me and my clothing ... after several bowel movements I felt completely robbed of my dignity ... when the nurse finally noticed what had happened, this was her response: `You've had an accident and you better clean yourself up.' ... She returned about 15 minutes later and threw a couple of diapers on the bed and left me to clean up the mess."
Okay, so this woman was a bitch. However, it isn't uncommon for someone to have to clean up for themselves, according to my aunt, if I remember our conversation correctly. This is the ER. Seriously, it's already pretty damned good that Griffis got INTO a room in 3 hours, considering that he had a completely non-life threatening condition. Waiting 6 hours in an ER waiting room is pretty commonplace, if you aren't about to keel over and die any time soon. He was admitted this quickly because a.) He's 81; b.) He's undergone chemo, which puts a high toll on the body.
Back to my point, while YES, this particular nurse had some serious attitude issues, and YES, he was aching and tired from chemo and illness and covered in poop and 81 years of age, there are still a lot of other things going on in an emergency department which probably have a slightly higher priority than clean-up call. Just sayin'. I just want to get across that it isn't right to generalize this kind of behaviour over to everybody working in the ward or the hospital (which should be pretty obvious) and having waited 3 hours before admission is seriously not as bad as it could've been.
(By the way, my aunt has no clue who this particular nurse was, and isn't about to find out.)
Alas, things did not improve when Ray was eventually admitted to a ward: One night, after he had lost control of himself - and no one came to clean him up, and his room smelled like a cesspool, and he was still weak from surgery - Ray cleaned himself up as best he could and made his way to the lounge to read the paper. He returned an hour and a half later, only to find his room had still not been cleaned.
My aunt laughed when she read about this. Waiting for housekeeping in a hospital takes forever. An hour and a half and room is still unclean? Not surprising. Also, if he had enough strength to clean up AND walk to the LOUNGE to read the paper, he must've had the strength to get to the bathroom. So why did he lose control of his bowels in bed?
Anyway, so then Griffis went "AWOL".
"I walked past the nurses' station four times without anyone taking notice. I must have been invisible that night ... I proceeded to find a bed in fresher air. I proceeded to find a bed in fresher air. I located one 10 feet from the nurses' station and quickly removed my slippers and crawled in. I fell fast asleep until around 6:30 a.m., when three angry people awakened me."
This, my aunt also lol'd at. "Three angry people"? No kidding. So he had the strength to clean up, walk to a lounge to read the paper, and then go TAKE a bed that COULD have been used for another patient who might have needed it more? On top of the madness that his disappearance may have caused security, this was basically childish. Honestly. Also, if you're walking past a nurses' station and not saying or doing anything, obviously nobody is going to pay much attention.
Ray said, "Later on, two fellows from management came down to see me. They asked me for the names of the nurses. I said, 'I don't know the names of the nurses. Don't you know who you've got on staff?' "
This was also funny. My aunt said that they can check these things to see who was on duty and where, but um. If you've been having a rough time with the attention being given (or denied) to you anywhere, would you try to take down names so you can complain or file a report? Okay, so maybe he never got a chance to see name tags or whatever, but just thought I'd point that out.
There are a lot of things that aren't exactly spelt out for you regarding hospital care. Nobody writes on the door of the ER, "You may have to wait 6+ hours before you are admitted unless you are bleeding out from every orifice. Have a nice day :D" or that, "Housekeeping takes a long time; even if nurses are complaining, they will not respond instantly, or even within an hour because this is not like room service. Sorry guys."
My aunt said that she understands that someone of Griffis' age would feel a need to complain, especially because he was honestly ill. And of course, because of that (and possibly his military background), he would be stubborn as hell in his views, namely the view that he is in the right, and has been severely wronged.
Honestly, she gets the reasoning behind his behaviour and his source of complaint. But she also makes it clear that just because you're ill and in pain, doesn't mean that you can lash out and be a complete asshole. She encounters a lot of people (or family members) who for some reason seem to feel entitled to be disrespectful just because they're sick.
Hospitals are not hotels, and nurses are not your slaves. Usually, if a nurse or anybody else in a hospital seems to be being rude to you, it's because you were rude to them first. It's called defending yourself and not being a doormat.
It's interesting that people admitted into the ER will pretty much always direct their sniping comments to the nurses attending to them, and nobody else. Just because nurses are in a way relegated to doing "grunt work", doesn't mean that they're there to wait on you hand and foot. My aunt has shut a lot of rude people up by pointing that out and asking them things like, "If you had to wait a bit longer before getting a table in a really busy restaurant, would you automatically start screaming at a waiter and making a scene about it?" The context and time frame is different, but the idea is the same. What makes you think that you have some divine right to gripe and bitch at someone who's trying to do their job as best and as quickly as they can?
Okay, there are plenty of nurses (and doctors/other hospital staff) that slack off and slow as fuck, my aunt will admit that much (and she hates those people). But come on, you're in the bloody ER-heck, you're in a goddamned hospital. Everybody is sick/needing attention in one way or another, and there's only so many people around to take care of everyone and everything. The people working are trained medical professionals, when it comes down to it. I'm sure that if you desperately needed help, they would know and they will help you. So STFU and sit your ass down. If you're that sick, you should be conserving your energy, right?
Griffis is actually pretty amazing, considering his age and his body being compromised by chemo. My aunt says that usually, the family members of the chemo patient will be the ones griping because the actual patient is too sick and too tired to talk, much less complain, clean up after themselves, and "go AWOL" by hopping into random unoccupied beds.
Fiorito wraps up his latest column with comments like "Heaven help the nation" because many people around the province have mailed him about similar experiences in places like NYGH which have been certified as meeting national standards.
In the meantime I am still waiting to hear from someone in a position of senior responsibility at NYGH, because it would be nice to know if what ails emergency there is considered an emergency.
I'm in no place to answer that, but personally, I'd say not really. Because that's just how things can be because they're unpredictable. Sometimes you're short half the staff on a shift, sometimes there's way too many patients and too few rooms and too few beds available. It's like having a particularly busy supermarket on a Saturday afternoon, and not having enough cashiers working at the time, and not enough lines open, and then you have a lot of disgruntled shoppers. Good job making Canada's health care system look like patient-abusing crap without really considering that there's other factors involved.
Again, I know I'm biased too, but I feel kind of miffed. :x
PS. Article is here and has links to part two. Not that I think anybody is really interested. :x
To all the Torontonians around the friends list who may or may not have been reading the Star this week, I don't suppose you guys caught the column (updated today) written by Joe Fiorito that was essentially relating the story of this 81 year-old man, Ray Griffis, who-oh screw it, let's just quote it off the article (square brackets mine):
After a recent operation to remove a chunk of his colon, Ray Griffis was rushed [the first article said "hustled"] to the emergency room of North York General Hospital [where my aunt works].
He had been recuperating at home, but he reacted badly to the first round of chemotherapy and was hit with stomach troubles [diarrhea] and what felt like the flu.
It took a good three hours before he was seen, and then he was left alone in isolation in emergency. There, he endured several instances of stomach-churning helplessness; no toilet in that room; use your imagination.
Ray's circumstances were complicated by an almost aggressive lack of attention - the nurse posted outside his room ignored him when he waved for help.
Before I begin, I'd like to say that if you're actually gonna read this whole thing (which I doubt because it's long and doesn't really concern anybody), you might want to read it using your own layout rather than mine, seeing as I know that my font size is pretty damned small and otherwise a pain in the ass.
Well, the above (and I suppose all the other random quotes I'll be making in this post) are from the column he wrote today updating on this man's story. Those last two paragraphs elude to the tone of this article, but essentially Fiorito seemed to take it upon himself to passive-aggressively make NYGH sound like a huge douchebag filled with bitchy staff with this and the first column he wrote on Monday.
Sure, I might be biased, seeing as my aunt is a nurse in the emergency ward at NYGH and I hear a lot of stories from her, but the problem with opinion columns like Fiorito's here is that it's opinion and he has yet to present what the situation is like on the other side of the fence. While I don't plan on sending anything off to the Star about it, I figured I might as well post something almost meaningful and opinionated on LJ for once by responding to this. :D"
So I showed this article to my aunt, obviously, whose first reaction was, "DID THEY MENTION NAMES? MY NAME HAD BETTER NOT BE ON THERE EVEN THOUGH I HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH IT. D:"
My aunt is lol like that. But you know, after she sat down and read it, mostly she just sighed and laughed and sighed more.
Relating to how this man was put into isolation (where there are no toilets) when he had diarrhea, my aunt said that this was based on protocol. It doesn't make any sense and my aunt thinks it's retarded, but that's how it is, and because he's a chemo patient and his immune system may be weaker, usually such a patient would have been put into a room on their own for that reason too.
As for the nurse who ignored him when he waved for help to get to a bathroom while in isolation, Griffis said, "It became obvious she didn't want to help me when she turned away on her chair and acted like I didn't exist." Now that, my aunt thought was odd. She told me that generally speaking, at the very least, short of the ER going berserk, a nurse would come in and say, "Just give me a moment to finish up and I'll be right back for you" or something to that effect. Regardless of whether or not the nurse would actually remember/be able to come back around or not is a different story admittedly, but at the very least there is that courtesy given.
"I had feces all over me and my clothing ... after several bowel movements I felt completely robbed of my dignity ... when the nurse finally noticed what had happened, this was her response: `You've had an accident and you better clean yourself up.' ... She returned about 15 minutes later and threw a couple of diapers on the bed and left me to clean up the mess."
Okay, so this woman was a bitch. However, it isn't uncommon for someone to have to clean up for themselves, according to my aunt, if I remember our conversation correctly. This is the ER. Seriously, it's already pretty damned good that Griffis got INTO a room in 3 hours, considering that he had a completely non-life threatening condition. Waiting 6 hours in an ER waiting room is pretty commonplace, if you aren't about to keel over and die any time soon. He was admitted this quickly because a.) He's 81; b.) He's undergone chemo, which puts a high toll on the body.
Back to my point, while YES, this particular nurse had some serious attitude issues, and YES, he was aching and tired from chemo and illness and covered in poop and 81 years of age, there are still a lot of other things going on in an emergency department which probably have a slightly higher priority than clean-up call. Just sayin'. I just want to get across that it isn't right to generalize this kind of behaviour over to everybody working in the ward or the hospital (which should be pretty obvious) and having waited 3 hours before admission is seriously not as bad as it could've been.
(By the way, my aunt has no clue who this particular nurse was, and isn't about to find out.)
Alas, things did not improve when Ray was eventually admitted to a ward: One night, after he had lost control of himself - and no one came to clean him up, and his room smelled like a cesspool, and he was still weak from surgery - Ray cleaned himself up as best he could and made his way to the lounge to read the paper. He returned an hour and a half later, only to find his room had still not been cleaned.
My aunt laughed when she read about this. Waiting for housekeeping in a hospital takes forever. An hour and a half and room is still unclean? Not surprising. Also, if he had enough strength to clean up AND walk to the LOUNGE to read the paper, he must've had the strength to get to the bathroom. So why did he lose control of his bowels in bed?
Anyway, so then Griffis went "AWOL".
"I walked past the nurses' station four times without anyone taking notice. I must have been invisible that night ... I proceeded to find a bed in fresher air. I proceeded to find a bed in fresher air. I located one 10 feet from the nurses' station and quickly removed my slippers and crawled in. I fell fast asleep until around 6:30 a.m., when three angry people awakened me."
This, my aunt also lol'd at. "Three angry people"? No kidding. So he had the strength to clean up, walk to a lounge to read the paper, and then go TAKE a bed that COULD have been used for another patient who might have needed it more? On top of the madness that his disappearance may have caused security, this was basically childish. Honestly. Also, if you're walking past a nurses' station and not saying or doing anything, obviously nobody is going to pay much attention.
Ray said, "Later on, two fellows from management came down to see me. They asked me for the names of the nurses. I said, 'I don't know the names of the nurses. Don't you know who you've got on staff?' "
This was also funny. My aunt said that they can check these things to see who was on duty and where, but um. If you've been having a rough time with the attention being given (or denied) to you anywhere, would you try to take down names so you can complain or file a report? Okay, so maybe he never got a chance to see name tags or whatever, but just thought I'd point that out.
There are a lot of things that aren't exactly spelt out for you regarding hospital care. Nobody writes on the door of the ER, "You may have to wait 6+ hours before you are admitted unless you are bleeding out from every orifice. Have a nice day :D" or that, "Housekeeping takes a long time; even if nurses are complaining, they will not respond instantly, or even within an hour because this is not like room service. Sorry guys."
My aunt said that she understands that someone of Griffis' age would feel a need to complain, especially because he was honestly ill. And of course, because of that (and possibly his military background), he would be stubborn as hell in his views, namely the view that he is in the right, and has been severely wronged.
Honestly, she gets the reasoning behind his behaviour and his source of complaint. But she also makes it clear that just because you're ill and in pain, doesn't mean that you can lash out and be a complete asshole. She encounters a lot of people (or family members) who for some reason seem to feel entitled to be disrespectful just because they're sick.
Hospitals are not hotels, and nurses are not your slaves. Usually, if a nurse or anybody else in a hospital seems to be being rude to you, it's because you were rude to them first. It's called defending yourself and not being a doormat.
It's interesting that people admitted into the ER will pretty much always direct their sniping comments to the nurses attending to them, and nobody else. Just because nurses are in a way relegated to doing "grunt work", doesn't mean that they're there to wait on you hand and foot. My aunt has shut a lot of rude people up by pointing that out and asking them things like, "If you had to wait a bit longer before getting a table in a really busy restaurant, would you automatically start screaming at a waiter and making a scene about it?" The context and time frame is different, but the idea is the same. What makes you think that you have some divine right to gripe and bitch at someone who's trying to do their job as best and as quickly as they can?
Okay, there are plenty of nurses (and doctors/other hospital staff) that slack off and slow as fuck, my aunt will admit that much (and she hates those people). But come on, you're in the bloody ER-heck, you're in a goddamned hospital. Everybody is sick/needing attention in one way or another, and there's only so many people around to take care of everyone and everything. The people working are trained medical professionals, when it comes down to it. I'm sure that if you desperately needed help, they would know and they will help you. So STFU and sit your ass down. If you're that sick, you should be conserving your energy, right?
Griffis is actually pretty amazing, considering his age and his body being compromised by chemo. My aunt says that usually, the family members of the chemo patient will be the ones griping because the actual patient is too sick and too tired to talk, much less complain, clean up after themselves, and "go AWOL" by hopping into random unoccupied beds.
Fiorito wraps up his latest column with comments like "Heaven help the nation" because many people around the province have mailed him about similar experiences in places like NYGH which have been certified as meeting national standards.
In the meantime I am still waiting to hear from someone in a position of senior responsibility at NYGH, because it would be nice to know if what ails emergency there is considered an emergency.
I'm in no place to answer that, but personally, I'd say not really. Because that's just how things can be because they're unpredictable. Sometimes you're short half the staff on a shift, sometimes there's way too many patients and too few rooms and too few beds available. It's like having a particularly busy supermarket on a Saturday afternoon, and not having enough cashiers working at the time, and not enough lines open, and then you have a lot of disgruntled shoppers. Good job making Canada's health care system look like patient-abusing crap without really considering that there's other factors involved.
Again, I know I'm biased too, but I feel kind of miffed. :x
PS. Article is here and has links to part two. Not that I think anybody is really interested. :x