Hello friends....
Well, now that the holidays are over, and my illness solidly in the rear-view mirror, I will do my best to blog like the old days.
Perhaps the most interesting thing to me in the world of music this week also happened in the publishing world. Bono published his debut column in the New York Times. And it's pretty good. Nice timing, too, given that everyone is talking about how the looming U2 album, calling it revolutionary and all that.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/opinion/11bono.html
Stay real.
A
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Monday, January 12, 2009
We're back in business !
Along with the rest of Regina, I’ve heard plenty about challenges in health care - there are too few nurses, not enough infrastructure and not enough money. I didn’t think much of the issue until I was hospitalized last week and learned lots about our health-care system shortcomings.
After my whirlwind tour of the General Hospital’s emergency ward, I was given bad news. Sure, I was told I’d be admitted for a few days, but the news got worse when I was told there was no bed for me. Instead, I would spend a few nights recovering from asthma complications at Code Burgundy, a large main-floor ward also used by patients who come for a few hours of treatment or assessment during the day.
Code Burgundy was established, I was told by hospital staff, because of the nursing shortage — elsewhere, there are nicely-decorated rooms and soft beds, but not enough nurses to care for patients. Others told me “there are just no beds.” Instead, this makeshift room, which is also referred to “patient overflow,” collects patients the hospital can’t normally handle and the remaining available nurses are assigned to patients like me. Until last week, I assumed patient overflow was something easily remedied by a bedpan and a little privacy.
The number of patients this ward accommodates varies from night to night — some get released, some find that coveted bed “upstairs,” and one nice lady during my stay was transferred by ambulance to the Pasqua Hospital where a regular bed had become available. Members of the unfortunate group that remained, which fluctuated last week between 12 and 20, were left to convalesce in make-do circumstances.
Mind you, this is no African refugee field hospital. But my bed was little more than a narrow cart on wheels, and the reassuring gurgle from my intravenous pump was interrupted at night by noises expected at a big room full of sick people and those who care for them. You’d be surprised how often — and how loudly — patients are coaxed from the their sleep at 4 a.m. for a some sort of test or treatment, or how often patients call out for help long after the lights are out. And never did I miss my own bed more than when I was handed a half-sized rubber pillow squished flat by a thousand heads before me.
I tried to treat this as an adventure. After all, my health was improving and I took solace in the notion I’d be home soon while other patients might not have similar prospects.
On the other hand, I was disappointed my tax money wasn’t working harder for me. I figured this room full of mostly-senior taxpayers who were spending their days and nights on stretchers deserved better. There was also fabulous irony in how I looked forward to leaving the hospital so I could catch-up on my rest. I’m 41 and I was at Code Burgundy for only a few days, so I felt bad for older people whose stays were longer than mine.
Others deserve better, too, including the patients who were scheduled for day procedures but received pre-dawn phone calls telling them not to come in because new patients like me were using their space.
The nurses and doctors are owed more, too — I felt let down by the system, but I was treated well by the men and women who cared for me, all of them energetic and positive despite the conditions. It must frustrate doctors and nurses to see the care of their patients compromised.
I wonder what Tommy Douglas would think if he were a hospital patient today. My guess is that he’d be dazzled by the care but then turn burgundy with frustration over the notion of patient overflow in a booming Saskatchewan in 2009.
I don’t know why this problem exists, so I have no advice for the politicians and health administrators who should fix it. During my hospital stint, I was reminded of all that I have read about nurse recruitment and the Saskatchewan Party’s boasting about what it spends on health-care, neither of which comforted me last week.
But I suspect that if the right people spent a night or two at Code Burgundy, I bet they’d start to work as hard as nurses to figure out a way for all hospital patients to have a bed.
And then all of us would sleep a little better.
After my whirlwind tour of the General Hospital’s emergency ward, I was given bad news. Sure, I was told I’d be admitted for a few days, but the news got worse when I was told there was no bed for me. Instead, I would spend a few nights recovering from asthma complications at Code Burgundy, a large main-floor ward also used by patients who come for a few hours of treatment or assessment during the day.
Code Burgundy was established, I was told by hospital staff, because of the nursing shortage — elsewhere, there are nicely-decorated rooms and soft beds, but not enough nurses to care for patients. Others told me “there are just no beds.” Instead, this makeshift room, which is also referred to “patient overflow,” collects patients the hospital can’t normally handle and the remaining available nurses are assigned to patients like me. Until last week, I assumed patient overflow was something easily remedied by a bedpan and a little privacy.
The number of patients this ward accommodates varies from night to night — some get released, some find that coveted bed “upstairs,” and one nice lady during my stay was transferred by ambulance to the Pasqua Hospital where a regular bed had become available. Members of the unfortunate group that remained, which fluctuated last week between 12 and 20, were left to convalesce in make-do circumstances.
Mind you, this is no African refugee field hospital. But my bed was little more than a narrow cart on wheels, and the reassuring gurgle from my intravenous pump was interrupted at night by noises expected at a big room full of sick people and those who care for them. You’d be surprised how often — and how loudly — patients are coaxed from the their sleep at 4 a.m. for a some sort of test or treatment, or how often patients call out for help long after the lights are out. And never did I miss my own bed more than when I was handed a half-sized rubber pillow squished flat by a thousand heads before me.
I tried to treat this as an adventure. After all, my health was improving and I took solace in the notion I’d be home soon while other patients might not have similar prospects.
On the other hand, I was disappointed my tax money wasn’t working harder for me. I figured this room full of mostly-senior taxpayers who were spending their days and nights on stretchers deserved better. There was also fabulous irony in how I looked forward to leaving the hospital so I could catch-up on my rest. I’m 41 and I was at Code Burgundy for only a few days, so I felt bad for older people whose stays were longer than mine.
Others deserve better, too, including the patients who were scheduled for day procedures but received pre-dawn phone calls telling them not to come in because new patients like me were using their space.
The nurses and doctors are owed more, too — I felt let down by the system, but I was treated well by the men and women who cared for me, all of them energetic and positive despite the conditions. It must frustrate doctors and nurses to see the care of their patients compromised.
I wonder what Tommy Douglas would think if he were a hospital patient today. My guess is that he’d be dazzled by the care but then turn burgundy with frustration over the notion of patient overflow in a booming Saskatchewan in 2009.
I don’t know why this problem exists, so I have no advice for the politicians and health administrators who should fix it. During my hospital stint, I was reminded of all that I have read about nurse recruitment and the Saskatchewan Party’s boasting about what it spends on health-care, neither of which comforted me last week.
But I suspect that if the right people spent a night or two at Code Burgundy, I bet they’d start to work as hard as nurses to figure out a way for all hospital patients to have a bed.
And then all of us would sleep a little better.
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