The Unforgettable Man
Being an orderly at Scottsdale Memorial Hospital was a fun job that required a strong heart. The hospital was a great place for me to experience the beauty of life and the unwanted death of humans. Throughout my year of employment at the Community Hospital, I was able to enjoy my work by interacting with many kinds of interesting patients. Without the hospital, I would have never imagined to be carrying on conversations with most of these people.
Aiding curses required many long exhilarating hours of work each day, but I loved experiencing the daily recovery of patients, in which I was able to be some part.
The night of August sixth became a different story. Just as my shift was coming to a normal close, a nurse's call light from one of the patient's rooms had illuminated. On one of my many repetitive walks down from the station to a patient's room, I had nothing else on my mind except for my evening plans with friends. I was extremely happy that this would surely be the last call light I would be answering that shift. As I entered the room, a crying relative came yelling at me. "He is going, something happened, do something, do something now!", demanded the distressed lady standing right at the bed side. I had seen this man before, although I had never spoken to him. I had know idea that he was not in a stable health.
"All right, all right," I replied in frustration, not knowing exactly what to do first. I looked at the 84 year old overweight male patient. He appeared very pale with his brown colored eyes half shut looking desperately at me for some sort of help. My mind was becoming blank, as I could not believe what I was about to experience. In training we were told this could happen from time, to time, but I never thought with me. We were also told how to deal with the death of a patient, although I never thought I would be a part in this type of situation. Regardless, I could not think straight. I could not move as I started to panic. I looked around before I noticed that I was the only help available. I became scared. I then all at once, ran out of the room, screaming for help to any one that would be able to hear me, "Code Blue, Code Blue, room
219 now!" Running back into the room, I stepped behind the bed and pulled the call light on again.
I escaped and rushed downstairs. I took refuge in the courtyard belonging to the house which I
I wondered what it must be like for the patients to be there for days until I began to chat with the patients.
Nurses hate it when patients are constantly turning their call lights on. The nurse feels like they are continuously in and out of that room for every little thing. Patients hate it when they wait a long time for someone to show up after pressing their call light. The patient begins to feel that they are not being take care of well and are being ignored. Patient satisfaction surveys state that one of the top complaints from patients were call lights not being answered in a timely manner. There has been evidence to prove that if facilities implement hourly rounding into their daily routine patient satisfaction goes up and call light use is greatly reduced. It is also proven if patient satisfaction goes up more nurses are satisfied with their job performance and can take care of their patients better.
ill patient with the help from a doctor, relative, or somebody else for a “good” death. I’m sure that many
the one person I could always turn to, and when I lost him my life changed
I wished I could have helped her more, if just to better her last moments on Earth. With all my hours in clinical shadowing or volunteering, with all my coursework as a graduate student in biomedical engineering—I was not preparred for this. I was not ready to cope with the sense of powerlessness I felt that day.
The man I talked about, the shadowed one at the Palace Bar, I met him
American medicine in the late 20th century seems considerably less romantic. Protocols and seven-minute patient visits are supposed to leave physicians tracking blood pressure readings and calibrating Prozac prescriptions. There's no time for wisdom in an HMO, or so the wiser and more ancient of current physicians lament. So it was with certain trepidation that I spent a day last December in an internist's office.
my step-mom's dad and he was my family. That was the first hit I took. I didn't want to do any
I waited there for a few minutes and then I felt this quiet and calm, deep inside. After a few more minutes of feeling this, I felt that I wanted to get up and make myself some nice dinner. I even said to myself: “This isn’t so bad, I can deal with this”.
got in the car, and went to visit her. Being as it was a very large hospital,
Patient Treatment in a Hospital The purpose of visiting a hospital was to find out how a hospital is
The second day I got to spend time in Same Day Surgery. Same Day Surgery is where they take care of patients before surgery and after surgery. While I was in Same Day Surgery I got to watch a patient's pre-op before he was about to get a pacemaker in. Throughout the whole pre-op several different nurses came in to deal with different things such as shaving the man's chest for where the incision would go, starting the IV, starting the fluids, and someone who asked all the questions of the man’s medical history and medications he was
A few minutes later, my mom woke me up and we went into a room. There
he tried to hide his fear, I knew he was afraid when my father would go on a