Patient Treatment in a Hospital

Patient Treatment in a Hospital The purpose of visiting a hospital was to find out how a hospital is

run and the experiences of patients who were receiving treatment

there. Interviewing a patient gave me the opportunity to develop my

own communication skills. It also allowed me to discover the pros and

cons of healthcare in a hospital and assess how I would treat patients

in the future as a doctor.

I interviewed a 29 year old man, NM, who works as an international

sales manager. His job involves lots of travelling to various

countries such as Scandinavia and Asia so he told me he enjoyed it but

it is tiring. He is single and lives alone. He was admitted in

hospital because he was suffering from an aneurism in the brain and

has been in hospital for 3 weeks. He has been in hospital before to

have an operation on his sinuses but the experience was entirely

different as he was allowed to go home after a few days. He was not

too sure about when he will be allowed to go home but has been told

that it may vary between 2 days and 2 weeks after the operation. This

was the first time that he was not able to do anything and had to lie

flat most of the time. He found the lack of independence frustrating.

He discussed the weeks leading up to being admitted into hospital. The

first time he felt pains was when he was using the cross trainer in

the gym. He felt light headed and sick. He was sweating a lot and felt

stiffness in his shoulders. The gym attendant suggested that he felt

pains because he hadn't eaten for a long while and gave him some

glucose tablets. He still fe...

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...earable as

possible and appreciated their hard work. The underlying point that

has been emphasised is that communication skills are very important

because the patient will gain some reassurance if they understand what

is wrong with them, why certain tests are being down and why they have

chosen a certain type of treatment to resolve it. I also discovered

that the patient was cared for by many different healthcare

professionals, nurses, doctors, surgeons, technicians who took the

various test also between primary care ( the GP), secondary care

(Hemel Hampstead hospital) and tertiary care (Royal free because it

has a specialist neurology department). This network of information

has to be sustained by various types of communication such as verbal

or written and is important so that patients can be treated

effectively.