When you have loved ones in the hospital, you want them to have the best care possible. In fact you expect that they will get better care in the hospital than at home because they can rest and have experts looking out for them 24/7. Most nurses and doctors o care about their patients very much, but even when they do, family members have many reasons for wanting professional in-hospital care for loved ones. We recently received this message from someone who felt just this way.
Dear NHC,
I am so glad that companies like you exist to provide care for people in the hospital. I never really thought that in-hospital care was something necessary, because I imagined that hospitals offer 24-hours-a-day watchfulness and care. My only personal experience with a hospital stay was for delivery of my children, and we did have exceptional care (aside from being woken up at all hours, of course). But I was alert and aware of everything, and I could speak for myself.
My understanding of the importance of in-hospital care was really sharpened recently when my father had to be hospitalized. He had an ulcer that led to the discovery of cancer and the past year has held several emergency room and hospital stays for him. What we learned was that while most of the health professionals do care about their patients and about providing excellent care, having just one or two who fall short can lead to traumatic experiences for patients who are unable to advocate for themselves. I will just give a couple of examples.
Biases on Pain Management Needs
No one can really know what another person is feeling, and the nurses would often ask “What’s your pain level from 1-10?” Then they would administer what they felt was the appropriate pain relief. We would have a nurse in charge all day who would let us know that she was giving a certain medication, and that if he needed additional pain management, other additional options would be available. Thus, my father’s pain would be managed throughout the day.
Then the night nurse would come on duty with completely different ideas. My dad would express that he had pain, and the nurse would say that he had to wait x number of hours or that he could only have Tylenol. For a man over 70, who’d just finished cancer treatments and was in the hospital for double pneumonia with a tube in his chest for collapsed lung, why should she have the right to decide he could only have Tylenol when the doctor and other nurses had felt that he might need stronger meds for full pain coverage? She even argued with us when we let her know that we knew his allowances. If we had not been there, she would have allowed him to endure unnecessary pain.