My Pulse rises, my pupils widen, my heart skips a beat, and I may be little out of breath. I am experiencing an adrenalin rush. This is what I experience when I go to the VA facility in Loma Linda. It is a conditioned response from years of dealing with the VA system. Now, I feel this way anytime I go to visit the Doctors office. There are many reasons for this. Long wait times are frustrating, especially for someone with PTSD. The fact that there are more germs in a doctor’s offices is a source of worry as well. The young and seeming inexperienced medical staff does not give me confidence in their ability. I believe that visits to the doctor can prove more traumatic than the illness. The Long wait times at the VA can be worse than the illness especially with someone with PTSD. My blood pressure rises when I go to the doctor’s office. For many years I didn’t understand why. But after doing some research and talking with my doctor, I discovered It is a fight or flight response. I associate it with a hostile environment. The waiting room is a closed space. There are strangers ...
Think about it like this, if you were put in a place where care was low and based on the number of people are admitted wouldn’t you get stressed out. Now think about what stress does to the body. Terrible things right? Imagine stress on top of decaying of the mind and limbs from old age. This is a sure recipe for insuring that we stay in the hospital and on the operating table.
In the essay “When Doctors Make Mistakes” written by Atul Gawande, he writes a first-hand account of mistakes made by himself and his colleagues. The essay is divided into five parts, each named to the narrative and emotions of the story he would tell. In each story he tells, he uses such vivid language that we as readers feel as if we are one of his colleagues. Each section has its own importance to the whole point he was trying to get across, ““All doctors make terrible mistakes” (657).
While John is under a great deal of stress, he is in the hands of seasoned professionals who all share the same goal, getting John better. St. Luke’s, a medical center geared towards helping veterans, has provided John a knowledgeable health care provider team to help meet his needs. John’s interprofessional team is being put together by John’s primary care physician, Dr. Jackson, and his licensed clinical social worker, Tessa. The team is kept small due to John’s reservations about opening up to people. The rest of his team will consist of a veterans affairs representative to help John seek any veterans benefits he is entitled to, as well as a mental health case manager. Lastly, a CNA assigned to help John integrate into life in a home with others while he tries to get a handle on his depression and Alzheimer’s.
Veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder need to receive better care, because post traumatic stress disorder is curable, damages relationships, and veterans made many dramatic sacrifices. The health care for veterans needs to be more easily accessible.
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), originally associated with combat, has always been around in some shape or form but it was not until 1980 that it was named Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and became an accredited diagnosis (Rothschild). The fact is PTSD is one of many names for an old problem; that war has always had a severe psychological impact on people in immediate and lasting ways. PTSD has a history that is as long and significant as the world’s war history - thousands of years. Although, the diagnosis has not been around for that long, different names and symptoms of PTSD always have been. Some physical symptoms include increased blood pressure, excessive heart rate, rapid breathing, muscle tension, nausea, diarrhea, problems with vision, speech, walking disorders, convulsive vomiting, cardiac palpitations, twitching or spasms, weakness and severe muscular cramps. The individual may also suffer from psychological symptoms, such as violent nightmares, flashbacks, melancholy, disturbed sleep or insomnia, loss of appetite, and anxieties when certain things remind them such as the anniversary date of the event (Peterson, 2009).
The purpose of this paper is to identify a quality safety issue. I will summarize the impact that this issue has on health care delivery. In addition, I will identify quality improvement strategies. Finally, I will share a plan to effectively implement this quality improvement strategy.
As humans when we are faced with any psychological or emotional problems, our initial thought is to turn to a therapist, doctor or any other health practitioners. Our initial thought when we are faced with problems regarding our health is to turn to a health professional because for ages that’s how it has been. When it comes to our health, health professionals nowadays do more harm than help. Many might disagree, but often patients are misdiagnosed with mental illnesses they do not have. Misdiagnosis occurs when a therapist or other health practitioners decide that a patient is suffering from a condition that he or she may not be suffering with. When misdiagnosed, patients are given unnecessary treatment, which could potentially
Here at the Chelsea Naval Hospital, the influx of patients arriving home from the war inflicted with "battle wounds and mustard gas burns," has created a shortage of physicians and it is becoming increasingly difficult to fight this influenza. Even our own physicians are falling ill from the disease and dying within hours of its onset. Today I received a letter from Dr. Roy, a friend and fellow physician at Camp Devens, who describes a similar situation:
In order to help current and future veterans there needs to be a change within the staffing, funding, and overall urgency towards mentally ill veterans. Though many people assume that veterans are well taken care of after war, evidence of mental health disorders and large numbers of suicide suggest otherwise, therefore the VA program should be reformed. Mental illness is no stranger to veterans of the U.S military, as far back as World War II there have been reports of mental disease among veterans. The most common mental illness among veterans is P.T.S.D (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), the severity of this illness usually increase due to a traumatic brain injury. Lifeline for Vets states that
According to a veteran, anxiety and depression are often misdiagnosed as PTSD. Since the Vietnam War, the occurrence and diagnosis of PTSD has skyrocketed. After a sev-ere reduction in the rate of PTSD in veterans where poorly documented PTSD cases were culled from the collection, Bruce P. Dohr-enwend of Columbia found a 13% reduction in the lifetime rate of PTSD; in a continuation of Dohr-enwend’s work, McNally concluded that a majority of PTSD patients were fit to live in everyday life, re-ducing the lifetime rate of PTSD by another 7% (Dobbs 2). In addition, many veterans have been known to be over- or under-reporting their PTSD symptoms, making the accurate diagnosis even more trouble-some.
In 2010, veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) cost the government about $1.3 billion (United States of America 17). This is an enormous amount of money, but it hasn’t even been helping veterans. Many vets aren’t finishing treatment but continue to receive disability checks from the Veterans Health Administration, abbreviated to VHA. Not only this, but some veterans are faking their way into the system and evading the diagnosis process by coming up with an tall tale. It is on the Veteran’s Affairs (VA) to determine whether these stories are fake (Department of Veterans’ Affairs), which is many times impossible to regulate. New laws that are being passed that make it easier for veterans to receive disability checks are not helping this problem either (Brown and Thompson 43). The government is spending too much money on a system that is failing our veterans; the public should not have to pay when the money is going to waste on misdiagnosis, failing treatment, and unjust laws.
"PTSD: National Center for PTSD Home." National Center for PTSD. VA Health Care, 1 Jan.
During my community placement of the cataract clinic at St. Joseph’s Hospital, one patient I observed looked extremely anxious and when I took a further look and watched her behaviour more closely, I recognized the concepts of stress and vulnerability were playing a key role in how she perceived the upcoming operation. I seized an opportunity to quietly speak with her and she explained that she had not received an adequate amount of rest the night before and the travel down had been exhausting. She also expressed concerns of being fearful about going into the operating room. I overheard a nurse earlier ask the group as a whole if anyone wanted an ativan to ease anxiety and the group consensus was no. I felt that because it was unanimous, she may have been embarrassed if it was only her that requested it. My concern for this patient was for her to remain comfortable and provide any healing initiatives that would reassure her that she was safe. I took it upon myself to advocate for her and asked if she would like an ativan, explaining it would provide a calming effect. She agreed and I asked one of the nurses if I could a...
“When Doctors Make Mistakes” narrates an event where the author Atul Gawande, a doctor, made a mistake that cost a women her life. He relates that it is hard to talk about the mistakes that occurred with the patient's family lest it be brought up in court. In that instance the family and doctor are either wrong or right, there is no middle ground in a “black-and-white mortality case”(658). Even the most educated doctors make simple mistakes that hold immense consequences but can only speak about them with fellow doctors during a Morbidity and Mortality Conference.
Throughout history there have been records of soldiers experiencing ‘shell shock,’ ‘battle fatigue,’ ‘gross stress reaction,’ and ‘soldier’s heart.’ The soldiers who suffered from these combat induced physiological traumas were branded as cowards, and removed from positions, reprimanded and even court marshaled. Vietnam veterans began to experience similar ailments immediately following the war. This new surge of afflicted soldiers forced the public as well as medical professionals and government officials to take notice of what is now ...