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Advice from A Nurse on “Advocacy”.
I have been called kind, compassionate, caring, “a wonderful asset to our team,” and an “excellent and experienced nurse.”
I have also been called: “Nurse Ratched,” a demon, “b*tch,” and a “bag of C****.” I’ve been called other things that I really can’t even type out because removing the profanity will make them incomprehensible and some, well, some were not in English.
For clarity’s sake, I’ll point out that I’ve been called all of these things in the line of duty while caring for patients at their bedside at the hospital. Many of these patients were altered or had cognitive issues that contributed to the verbal abuse, but not all. Some of them were very apologetic when they had their faculties later and we had a good laugh about it. On the other hand, some were very cognizant of what they were doing and were intentionally being verbally abusive.
Some of the offenders were not even patients; some were family members; emboldened by being on the phone, feeling frustrated about care, and they took it out on the easiest and most accessible person. Some were family members at the bedside who felt that condescending words and threats would make a difference to their person’s care.
I’m going to take a moment to step out of my normally compassionate self and give everyone a little bit of perspective.
It was recently said (in my presence) that nurses provide better care when there is a family member at the bedside, “I [have] yet to have any family members inpatient and not had family being on-site make the care better because they were able to intervene.”
To say that I am irritated, frustrated, and shocked by this minimizes the actual feelings involved. This is from a mental healthcare practitioner, no less. Now, it’s possible that it might just be the facilities seen. It might just be the state these actions were witnessed in. It might just be bad luck.
But I don’t think it is. I think it’s a strange misconception people have that being the “advocate” for their family members will get them better care. Don’t get me wrong; it is important to be supportive and helpful to patients that are hospitalized and to help them verbalize their concerns and to even help them keep track of information. Nurses love this. We love educating families and sharing the information so that everyone can be a part of care. What we do not love is threats, demands, and this perception that nurses will do you wrong unless an “advocate” is there to navigate everything for you.
I’ll start by being the kind nurse that I am and I will say that research shows that having an abusive family member actually reduces the quality of care, at least in terms of time spent in the room. I’d love to show you the study (I did have a copy at one time), but when looking at nursing journals now, there’s a much larger emphasis on how to “de-escalate” with violent patients and families. When families do not trust the nursing staff, the nursing staff will also not trust the family. This means that our responses to you will likely be more measured, more precise, and frankly, delayed, while we ensure that everything is perfectly in line for when you present ourselves before you. We will not give you our off the cuff responses or our interpretation of the situation if we feel that you will advocate using us as an example later. We will ensure that everything is done strictly by the book. We will ensure that the care is done per policy, documented aggressively, and is performed competently. We will likely not go out of our way in order to make you more comfortable. We will likely spend as little time with you as possible because we know exactly what you are doing with your phone and notebook and pen.
We know that you are writing down the name of the medication and the dose and the time it was done. We know you’re writing down the date and our first/last names. We know you are second-guessing everything we tell you and googling it the second we leave the room. You are not the first. Sadly, you will also not be the last.
We do not want to be sued and we do not want to lose our licenses.
We will do exactly what is required for your family member, whether or not you “advocate” for it or are even present for it. When you “advocate” so aggressively, perhaps even abusively, in order to “intervene” we will tolerate it as long as we can and as long as legal counsel will allow us to do so.
But do not be confused: your advocacy and your attitude matters. If you advocate for what you want and not what the patient wants, we are taking notes as well. If you are abusive rather than simply assertive, you may find yourself escorted out by security.
Do not have any illusions: we love having family members there at the bedside to support and care for our patients. We love that you provide a type of security that even the best nurse can never provide. We love how you love and fight for and care for your families. We do. We want what is best for our patients and we want them to be well enough to leave the hospital. We want them to have a good experience. We want them to trust nurses moving forward and to come back to our hospitals.
Nurses and families should be working together, rather than judging one another and working against one another.
This will not happen so long as this idea of monitoring professional staff endures.
Published in Healthcare
Because you care and have integrity I am sure that ALL the comments, both positive and negative, are true. I once took my daughter to a hospital for croup. Everything worked out fine. My daughter was fine. The main nurse for who worked with us ripped me a new A-hole for waiting so long to take her to the emergency room. And ripped me further for following a pediatrician’s advice on how to treat croup at home rather than what a nurse would have told me. Then she put Teletubbies on repeat in my daughters room to further punish me.
I decided that all this horrific bitchiness was out of love for children, and frustration with stupid parents. I just took it, didn’t complain to her bosses, and followed her instructions on the next croup attack. They worked.
I really don’t need friends or compassion during a medical event. I need people who know what they are doing and can make it happen. Emotional support can happen at home, when the danger has passed.
This is what I wonder if it is. Sometimes, its just that the patient is overwhelmed and doesn’t know where to focus their concerns, but an advocate close to them is able to bring up the concerns faster than the patient simply from it not being them, but being close to them.
My sister had a friend who was pregnant and had been missing a lot of work because she was sick all the time. She asked if I would talk to her. Simply put, she didn’t know what to bring up with the doctor and the doctor doesn’t always ask the questions that get the patient to realize something is important. I didn’t. Oh, morning sickness will go away by week 14. He stopped asking about it. I lost weight, and he asked if I was thirsty – but there wasn’t any follow up beyond that. I didn’t want this girl to find herself in the same situation because she didn’t know what was relevant to bring up and what wasn’t.
I don’t think it should be necessary to be combative. But sometimes having someone there “advocating” for the patient so they don’t have to do it can lead to better care simply because the patient may not know or feel emboldened or may be too overwhelmed to bring up their concerns.
I frequently wished I had an advocate during my L&Ds because, to be quite honest, I’m far too accommodating of everyone. I’m in labor and apologizing to the woman wiping up my amniotic fluid off the floor. I really did need someone there to ask if I could walk around to induce labor, because I simply wasn’t going to ask to be a bother.
While I understand the point of view of the OP, I respectfully dissent.
When my loved one was suffering from advanced cancer and the ravages of chemo/radiation, etc., and had shrunk to less than 90 lbs., she had been advised she should eat as much as possible, of anything she wanted and could get down, because she needed the calories. OK.
During one hospital stay, she was scheduled for some kind of procedure (I forget which) that would involve general anesthesia, so it was required she have no solid food after midnight and no water after 6AM. We were assured she was first on the day’s OR roster. We sat in her hospital room on the med-surg floor for HOURS waiting for the procedure. I kept asking but there were no answers and no new orders.
Finally at 3 or 4PM, I went around and made an enormous fuss. (Being a lawyer, I know how to be forceful without violating protocol or using foul language but I did get my point across.) Finally someone got in touch with someone who knew. Turns out the procedure had been put off, a decision apparently made by noon, only nobody had told us or put in orders for food, water, etc.
If I hadn’t been her advocate, my wife would have grown ever weaker for who knows how long. . . . I will not be discouraged from advocating in a large hospital setting with so many moving parts. I only hope if I am ever debilitated, there will be someone to advocate for me.
And I don’t think that’s wrong. At all.
As a matter of fact, I wish I had someone to advocate for me during my first labor/delivery as well. The outcome would likely have been impacted. But I was young and I didn’t really know what to expect and my doctor shocked me in her escalation from induction to necessary and immediate c-section.
I did not even know what to ask.
I’m not saying that it is wrong to have someone with you to help you focus on what your needs are and getting yourself taken care of. I know I have had plenty of times where I was too out of it (post op) to be able to know what I needed to know or to think to ask what I should have. What I am saying is that this presumption that nursing is doing wrong, at the baseline, is harmful to the nurse-patient relationship.
It is not helpful to start a relationship in an antagonistic fashion and it can often impede care, rather than expedite it.
First off, you should not be disparaged for asking appropriate questions and getting appropriate answers. There is nothing wrong with that.
However, I do take offense at your assumptions here. Let me walk you through this, because you seem to think that your wife would never eat again if it weren’t for you.
6am liquid cut off time. With general anesthesia, they usually require 4-6 hours of nothing by mouth, not even ice chips. In some emergencies, they allow for as little as one hour. This means that the surgery was likely always scheduled to be done after noon on that day. If that is correct, then if they hadn’t taken her to pre-op by noon, it would be reasonable to ask questions regarding the OR schedule and whether or not she was going down to surgery. However, at this point, it is entirely possible that the OR staff does not even know yet that the surgery has been canceled by the surgeon and the floor nurse (who is likely transmitting all of this information) certainly does not know this. If it is the case that the surgeon is also canceling the case because of an emergent surgery or another surgery that ran over, he is unlikely to put in the orders himself. He is also not going to be making any phone calls while his/her/zir’s hands are in someone’s bodily cavities.
If they “knew it was canceled” by noon, they should have told you as soon as was feasible. However, it is extremely likely that they (the people who would have told you) did not actually know. Maybe the doctor did, maybe the OR staff did, but it’s likely the nurse did not know. Meanwhile, the floor nurse is also unable to get orders to feed the patient because whatever doctor would put in the orders would not see your wife on the schedule for the next day (because no one would have likely changed it at that point) and the surgeon would, presumably, still be busy.
In the meantime, you somehow “made an enormous fuss” in a special, somehow inoffensive way (because you’re a lawyer, I’ll assume you used all the special words) that got your wife fed? I know you want to see yourself as the hero, but it is likely that the order would have been put in by 4 or 5pm anyway and your wife would have been fed. All you managed to do is make a display and have the nurses warn one another about you.
Meanwhile, your wife was still receiving IV fluids/nutrition.
There will be. And even if you don’t have family, there will still be. Even if your family demands immediate action, there still will be. Even if your doctor won’t advocate for you, there still will be.
I am sorry you felt neglected, but more often than not, I think families (with the best intentions), do not understand how hospitals work, the moving parts, and that sometimes their loved one is not the immediate priority. My mother has had cancer, chemo, radiation. She has had multiple tumors removed. She has had multiple surgeries delayed; her first, by over 6 weeks, which re-staged her cancer from Stage I to Stage IIIB, requiring multiple treatments and eventually causing metastases. Decreasing her chances of survival to less than 10%.
She has had times where she could not speak.
She has times where, even as vocal as she is, she was too upset to speak.
I have advocated for her when necessary. But I have never, ever, taken a nurse to task on something that was likely not their fault by virtue of the fact that the surgeon and medical staff were inconsiderate or were otherwise preoccupied.
And you made my exact point for me, eloquently. You advocated. To the nurse. Who was already likely advocating for you, calling around, trying to find out what was going on, knowing full-well that the next time she saw you that you were going to ask, again, what was happening with the surgery.
And then you put pressure on the nurse for something she couldn’t control and called it “advocacy”. That is not advocacy. I won’t call a spade a spade. But we both know that wasn’t advocacy.
That was a horrendous ordeal for the 2 of you. If you had been stuck at a table in a restaurant and no one got yr food order, management would give you free meals. But I doubt the cancer procedures were one penny cheaper for the agony endured.
I will add my voice to yours, as someone who was hired as a companion/private nurse assistant to doctors and nurses who fell ill and knew better than to deal with a hospital stay, all alone.
I remember the guy who was a stroke victim. I checked in on him when my real patient was sleeping. He had no friends or family who visited. One arm was broken, the other stroke-impaired. The food tray would get delivered, but no hospital personnel showed up to feed him. I attempted to get someone to assist by setting the lite on for the staff. No one fed him so I did.
I also recall an early life hospital experience of my own – I had an infection that was taking a toll on me. Possibly it was toxic shock syndrome, although I had mine about 6 months before that became a thing.
My body was shutting down. I had already lost 15 of my 127 pounds. Some attendant wheeled me into the back part of a dark hallway. Then supposedly some lab tech was supposed to come out and take my blood for tests but I passed out. It was close to two hours before I was noticed. I was in a flimsy hospital gown and it was absolutely freezing cold. I remember feeling lucky they had finally found me before the lab techs went home for the night.
The difference being that hospitals are not restaurants. You are not “stuck” at a table. The comparison really does not do any of this matter justice.
Hospitals are for medical care. Yes, they were inconvenienced. Yes, it was unpleasant and uncomfortable. It was, however, in no way immediately life threatening nor was it “agony” (I assume, because if pain had been a complaint it likely would have been treated, please correct me if I’m wrong @fritz). The patient, presumably, didn’t eat for 12 hours. That is a normal amount to wait to eat in between meals for people who eat at regular times, including in the hospital. We frequently feed patients at 5:30pm and 7:30am: 14 hours apart. Imagine the agony of those on other floors who have to wait until 8am for breakfast!
There is no excuse for this. Zero. You were kind to feed him (disclaimer: stroke patients often require certain “feeder” precautions to prevent aspiration, etc, etc.). You should have complained to the charge nurse, to the hospital, and also to the state. In a kinder world, I can assume that they were just busy and he regularly ate his meals late when the feeder was able to come. In reality, they probably left the tray in front of him and then took it away later. It’s gross negligence, abuse, and…. my other words on it are vastly more unkind. People, occasionally, make mistakes. We hate for it to happen, but it does. It appears that this was no mistake and was instead habit.
This hospital needed a special visit from some special people from the state if it went on. Indeed, it could have been reported, rectified, and then restarted once you left. It’s entirely possible they still need a visit from the State. I wish I could say that this is rare and that people are better than this. But they are not and it is one case where having a private duty aide is not actively detrimental to the patient.
That makes me so, so sad.
I hope that you will be able to take some time off soon. This pandemic is running people ragged, especially those in medical settings. Hugs and best wishes. I bet you are glad to have Hubby to talk to when you get home.
It’s a different country so I can’t comment on the US. But in Ireland it’s becoming generally understood that if you have an elderly relative in hospital you need to be there just to make sure they get something to eat.
Our experience was with our father who has Alzheimer’s, that when he said no to food, he was taken at his word and the food was taken away. One of us had to be there at every mealtime otherwise he would have got nothing for the weeks he was there.
Sometimes things work the best if you just be quiet. And sometimes they don’t.
Perhaps if you changed your handle to “TheLeftNurse”. Hehe . . .
Ha! Yes, well, patients can be very creative when they’re angry that you are not giving them whatever they want (despite doctor’s orders, legality, whatever). The best insults generally come from the patients with some cognitive issues because they cannot use common insults because they can’t access them easily. We have a good laugh about it. Usually.
Indeed. It’s just a matter of knowing when that makes all the difference. And knowing who. It’s the unfortunate fact that nurses are the face of a hospital. Whatever happens while there (from the food on up), is usually taken out on the nursing staff.
People should be fed. This is ridiculous; Ireland or not. Now, with dementia it gets difficult. Often, the patients will not eat for us. Sometimes you can sweet-talk them into it, but it really is best that they have social meals. Research demonstrates time and again, that eating is a social experience as well as nutrition. When other people are not eating, the same cues aren’t there. Particularly with dementias, it just isn’t the same being spoon-fed. Alone.
That’s just awful, but I understand how it can happen and why the families (particularly in these cases) are closely involved. It usually really helps.
I think you believe that advocacy involves being a jerk. It does not. But as a sixteen-year-old, I caught two separate would-be fatal mistakes because I sat next to my mother’s bedside and asked to verify every single drug administered against the order on her chart. Twice either the doctor wrote something illegible or a nurse read it wrong. Advocating means checking and double-checking, and keeping watch. Your perspective is of a good nurse; I know bad ones. I know doctor friends who wanted to make it off shift by happy hour and taped a central line back onto a patient instead of reinserting it because they didn’t want to be late. I know nurses who cut similar corners. You simply cannot do that with a family member sitting there. That’s what’s been lost this year, the rights of families to sit there. And I am convinced it has led to a lot of unnecessary deaths.
I appreciate your frustration, and I’m sure it comes from a place of concern and knowledge.
I also appreciate that institutions can become officious and insensitive, can elevate their own narrow expertise over other important things, and can make mistakes.
I am not a medical person, but I have friends who are. One of them is a thoracic surgeon who, when he isn’t cutting out pieces of people’s lungs, spends some of his time reviewing malpractice cases for hospitals and rendering his professional opinion. Because I like to write and he doesn’t, I do much of his proofreading for him. This gives me a tiny view into the experiences of patients — including patients whose outcomes were, for a variety of reasons, unfortunate. This has done little to reinforce my confidence in experts, medical or otherwise.
And that might be part of what’s going on. Many Americans are tired of experts, have lost faith in experts, and resent experts playing their expert card in situations where their expertise probably shouldn’t matter. We have education experts telling us our children can’t go to school, health care experts telling us what we can and can’t do on a daily basis — too many experts assuming too much authority.
I know you’re giving vent to your frustration in your post, and that’s fine. I’ve ranted a bit myself, and I know how rants work. They aren’t supposed to be balanced. They aren’t supposed to show a lot of empathy for opposing viewpoints, or to acknowledge that maybe things aren’t as one-sided as you seem to feel they are.
I suppose some patient or family member might write a similar post but from a different perspective, communicating frustration with mistakes made by medical providers, with insensitivity, with doctors who make no effort to communicate, with policies that serve the hospital’s interests more than the patients’, etc. That would probably seem as lopsided and, frankly, disrespectful to you as your post might seem to them.
These are tense times for all concerned, and it’s hard to sit down and have a mutually respectful discussion about the challenges of doing a hard job while also recognizing that family members sometimes get it wrong for understandable reasons, just as medical people sometimes get it wrong for understandable reasons. During a time when contact with medical professionals is so limited, thanks to our response to the Wuhan coronavirus, it seems to me it’s particularly important to try to be sensitive to all parties: provider, patient, and family.
No. I think that family members do. Instead of coming from a point of safety or concern, they jump directly to threats and litigation. They often feel that they are not helping unless they are closely watching every detail, giving suggestions, and questioning care.
As I’ve repeatedly stated, there is nothing wrong with advocating for and supporting your family. There’s nothing wrong with asking questions. Any decent nurse will understand and support that.
However, what people do not seem to understand from this angle or from others in the field is that we do not want an antagonistic relationship and that it actively harms patient care. It reduces time with the patient, increases caregiver stress, and reduces compassion toward the family. Additionally, these family members and “advocates” often do not know what is best for the patient (from a medical perspective) and in being overly aggressive actually cause mistakes from making the staff nervous.
I understand that people have their horror stories; mistakes are made both honestly and negligently. Everyone knows of at least one person who should have retired long ago. There are people who are awful at their jobs everywhere. It’s an unfortunate fact. But healthcare is unique in many ways and what is often best for the patient is to work together as a team, rather than as the sole judge, protector, and facilitator of care.
First off, no offense was intended. In response to your post, I was vividly remembering when I had had to take on a role as an outspoken advocate, and that was all I was trying to convey. We had fabulous nurses throughout all her many, many stays over 4 years, whether for diagnostics, infusions, or surgical procedures.
Second, what I described from memory occurred sometime in the 4-year ordeal that ended more than 14 years ago, so I may have misremebered the exact times, e.g., for cut off of water — nevertheless because of her weak state and extent of her illness, we had been assured she would be the first one scheduled that day, due to her condition. In any event, it was the caring nurses who kept us cared for, and patient.
Still, it was only once I’d become insistent without being rude (and I certainly made no threats of any kind — ) that we got the ear of a “hospitalist” who looked into the situation and discovered her procedure had been canceled. And no, I certainly did not create any need for anyone to warn anyone about me or us . . . they were all most understanding and apologetic, and we always had excellent care from the nursing staff. I am grateful for them all.
A patient walks in the door or is wheeled into an ER, they think they’re at the top of the list. They’re not and sometimes that’s when the trouble starts. Doctors, protocols, insurance, Medicare/cade the list can go on forever.
Yes, it is sad. I did complain to the charge nurse abt the stroke victim.This was the same hospital where I once called up a nurse friend who was on 2 days off to have her run some special burn bandages up to me, as the hospital didn’t have any!
IIRC, you’re in So Calif, where there are conservative people & institutions who impact how things are set up. In No Calif, due to everything under the sun being run by libs, many aspects of health c. are under the dictate of “let’s create opportunities for newly arrived illiterate immigrants.”
Part Two, to @therightnurse
Hospitals & nursing homes in Northern Calif have nursing assistants who refuse to speak English, to the patients, and that is if they know any English, with both these situations being in violation of state law.
Just a year ago, an elderly friend, M, did not eat for 3 days, as she couldn’t get the aluminum foil off the containers at her 3 meal times.
The lil Guatemalean Nursing Assistant didn’t know enough English to ask patients about anything, and assumed she didn’t want food! At least M was getting an IV for fluid and nutrition – but how suck-y is that. If this health care was free, okay – but we pay through the nose on premiums and then get treated like dreck, so medical cos can save by hiring semi-legals.
As a certified nursing assistant, who was taught state law about many aspects of caring for patients, I once reported that a co-worker stole money from me.
She sent me out to my car to bring her the newspaper, and while she thought I was gone, she went through my purse. Her one hand was still in my purse, with the other holding the 20 dollar bill I had for gas money. When I reported her to the nursing agency manager, she replied, “Carol I will overlook this event right now, but if you ever report on a co worker again, you will be let go for your racism.” (This was the first time I had ever reported anyone for anything.)
Meanwhile the same agency manager would call all the time to ask me if my one African American co worker, who was an absolute miracle of a worker, had ever been late, ever ruffled the client’s feathers, ever forgotten to put every single thing away. “You can’t be accepting of a co worker’s flaws, just because you like them,” was what I would be told. No matter how many times the agency was reassured my co worker was a credit to our field of endeavor, the calls still occurred.
What the nation is now experiencing in terms of “white people being privileged and racist” and all the rest of it are things I have had to deal with since the mid 1990’s. In my case, I finally, reluctantly left working for agencies, believing I’d be unemployed, only to find that I had more work than ever.
Two things were responsible for that — one: the local hospitals being so awful medical professionals wanted me at their bedside while in the hospital, and two: so many families had experienced their “sweet, gentle friendly” nursing assistant from south of the border treat them great for a year while embezzling every other bank account the elderly couple had. (Only to disappear back to the Philippines or Mexico.) I then had more work than I wanted, and I no longer had to split my pay with the nursing agency.
I think you should probably read my last comment in reply to Bethany. While you read my post harshly(and rightly so, I didn’t really mince words!), you do not seem to have grasped the concept. This is not about nurses versus families. This is not a “I’m Right and You’re Wrong” moment.
This is about defining true advocacy and pointing out that while family members often have good intentions, in practice they fail at their intended goal (advocacy) and instead complicate matters unnecessarily by assuming the worst. Nurses (and most healthcare providers, I’m sure) are well educated on medical malpractice, clinical errors, and the stupid things that can happen in hospitals. Indeed, we too have sick family and friends and are often called in to second guess treatment plans and “advocate” for others. Sometimes, even nurses get sick or need help. We are very realistic about care and about the state of things; we know things go wrong and there are crappy nurses/doctors/whoever in the world. We will often truly advocate for our people as necessary. But we understand what it means (generally) and we understand what we do not know. We understand that we do not always have all the details.
I think there is a distinction that people are missing, though I tried to be clear. There is a difference between *feeling* like one is advocating versus actually doing it. There is a difference between disrespect and awareness. There is a difference between questions and interrogation. When people pat themselves on the back for their “advocacy”, more often than not, they are feeling a sense of accomplishment/power in a situation where there is little control that can be had. They look for areas to micromanage because hospitals are frightening and the unknown is even worse from a distance.
Nurses do understand this. We have great compassion for it.
Generally.
But laypeople need to understand the difference between advocacy and aggression and safety and micromanagement. This, of course, was the entire point. My goal was to remind and ask people to be real advocates, to be appropriately involved, to care, and to keep in mind that healthcare requires a team. Help the team, rather than hinder it.
Cat fight!
Just kidding . . .
Your point is an important one. However by the time a person’s family member gets admitted, there may have been so many hiccups along the road to getting that hospital bed, that they are frustrated, confused and of course afraid.
There will always be jerks who frequent any business outlet. People who order their burger “very well done” and then gripe the guy at the table next to them, who wanted the burger rare, got his before they got theirs.
But people visiting in the hospital are also afraid, even people who are not jerks.
In Scandinavia, each hospital I was aware of had a social worker. That person tracked newly admitted patients. Also if nurses felt belittled or badgered by family members, they could ask the social worker to intervene.
In my county, so many decisions are made by hospital personnel that are disastrous. Why should a single one of my friends have had two separate malpractice situations in 45 days last autumn? First her son was examined after a car crash, told not a bone was broken. Only then the guy collapses 2 weeks later due to having a broken clavicle.
Next, my friend’s mom was shoved out of the same hospital at 9:30 PM. The nurse said that “she is fine; nothing is going on with her lungs that won’t improve after a few days of fluid and rest.” My friend knew better so drove her out of the county to a hospital where they drained a liter and a half of fluid out of the mom’s lung.
So I think a lot of what is going on right now, and I refer back to Kent’s reply number one, is this: nurses are very knowledgeable. But they are now and usually always will be behind doctors, in terms of hospital and clinical authority.
Kent explains a doctor had told him how to treat croup at home. The results ended up being unfavorable. The nurse knew better.
I found that to be the case with my spouse’s appendix situation in May 2019. The only person who treated Mark like a real patient and who heard him detail his symptoms was a nurse, a male nurse by the way. He was not simply kind and compassionate, he clearly stated: “Sounds like a ruptured appendix.”
Meanwhile the drs treated us both like pain seekers. For several hours. They never mentioned it being a ruptured appendix. I found out later on that doctors in Calif are not allowed to diagnose a patient in the ER – they must do tests and then go by the result of the tests.
This is why we won’t have drs in 3 to 5 years. They are not allowed to do this or that now due to concerns about malpractice. Should I point out the first Cat scan done on his right hand side showed no problem with the appendix? So much for machine tech being better than good old fashioned diagnostic skill. I pointed out the nurse had opined it was his appendix, that I thought the same way and then insisted on a second test. Which proved it WAS the appendix.
AI is coming along, with COVID pushing it along and far beyond what people think. Nano tech has changed the entire AI ball game, as has the 5G now being installed everywhere.
And although the medical profession thinks it is not coming for them, it is. The whole idea that an ER doc should not diagnose the patient in front of them is beyond the pale, but then everything in our society happens to be. So that gives credence to the claims of futurologists that doctors and other health professionals will be replaced sooner rather than later. (Nurses will be among the last to go, as people do like nurses, and will employ them privately. We like you — no matter how hard a time we give you folks when we are inside a hospital.)
I completely understand. I have family with chronic illnesses, including my child. I regularly have to advocate, interpret, and press for things to be done. I don’t disagree that sometimes it is needed, either!
I think I will write a companion to this; Advice From a Nurse on How to Advocate (without making everyone hate you). There is definitely a need for it, it’s just a matter of doing it the right way so that you can get results and the team works better… or if not, you’ve made expectations and boundaries clear. There are ways to do this without making nurses cringe!
And no, it doesn’t involve bribing with food or coffee (though both are adored).
I promise, that is not the case. CA law is stringent across the state and federal programs are far-reaching. I wish we could!