died in hospital after she was denied food and water.
on 07/30/2012 at 12:27 PM
Tick tick tick,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
You’ve got to practically sit on nurses and doctors to ensure proper care of yourself, or a relative who is in hospital care.
Visit daily, sometimes twice daily. Double-check charts, medication orders, food schedules, everything. Ask when the sheets were changed, when the patient was last turned (if they’re bedridden), etc…
Doctors and nurses will very quickly come to recognize you as “that patient’s eagle-eyed protector.” They’ll be more thorough with your relative than with others because they HAVE to be to avoid questions/complaints.
If a nurse or doctor comes in to check on your relative, ask them when the last time they washed their hands was. Did they just come from another patient’s room? Wash NOW damn it. Don’t like it? Tough. Get out of the room if you’re not willing to follow basic sanitary procedures.
If something seems even slightly out of place, start asking questions. It’s usually worse than it seems.
Be polite and be firm. If that fails, be noisy and let it get ugly if it needs to. Hospitals are where healthy people end up dying if they’re not very, very careful.
Find out if your hospital is having any outbreaks of anything (C. difficile is being particularly troublesome in hospitals in Ontario Canada, and they’re trying to keep it quiet.)
Oh, if your hospital IS trying to contain something nasty like that, don’t give them shit about the extra glove & gown procedures you might have to go through. Consider yourself lucky to have a hospital staff that gives a damn.
Government healthcare is good for you.
NOT!
MRSA outbreaks in Ontario too. LINK .
Yes, hospitals and nursing homes absolutely SUCK, considering how damn much they charge. And it will only get worse as it gets downgraded and rationed until OboingoCare.
Drew: Thanks for the link. You’ll see little regional stories like this about these outbreaks, but they don’t ever seem to escape their local news market, and they’re _very_ short, like this one.
07/30/2012 at 02:49 PM
07/30/2012 at 06:59 PM
