If you have ever had family in the hospital you will relate to my story. They are amazing places. I can’t quite grasp the amount of activity that goes on in a large hospital. There is non stop coming and going. Did you ever have an ant farm? Ants going every direction. Ants for all kinds of functions and activities. Ants on every level and in every tunnel. There are working ants, guard ants, nursery ants and the QUEEN ANT. There are nurses. Many nurses. All kinds of nurses with various names and titles. There is a charge nurse, technical nurses, therapy nurses and your NURSE.
They each have different functions. They are seldom inactive. On rare occasions they sit at a computer and log their activities. (For billing purposes I suppose) They move into your room, take your blood pressure and temperature and move on. If you stand in the door to the room where you can see down the hall you will see them move into other rooms. You can imagine, pretty accurately I believe, what they are doing. They will say something like “How are you Mr. So & So or Mrs. Such & Such?” “How are you feeling?” “That’s good” or “I’m sorry”. They will hook you up, play 20 questions, fix your IV, fix your bed, and clean your room, among about 100 other things.
They want to know how much you ate, how much you drank and how much of it came out the other two openings when you were through with it. Pain level on a score of 1 to 10 is important to them. They ask that question a lot. It seems like people learn to answer in the upper two thirds if they want medication. Five doesn't get much response but seven or eight will get you a shot or a pill in about an hour.
I have decided that you don’t want to be sick when you go to the Hospital. It is much too busy and strenuous for sick people. There is no way to rest or relax with all the activities the nurses have to perform. Just about the time you go to sleep, here comes someone to give you something or hook you up to something. If you’re really sick and feeling lousy they schedule all kinds of tests. Nurses show up with wheel chairs to take you where you need to go. If you can't travel that way they just send two people to wheel your bed down to the bowels of the place, out of site of family and authorities, and prod, poke, measure, draw, x-ray, and scan. All kinds of other procedures, they sedate you for, and no one can remember what actually went on. You wake up and have more sore places and bruises than you remember, before they rolled you away.
I am simply amazed at how well every thing works. I can’t say enough good things about the nurses. They are run ragged by everyone, they are subjected to terrible acting people with all kinds of repulsive conditions and yet almost to a person they manage to respond positively and respectfully and with a seemingly genuine compassion for your condition. My hat is off to the Nurses and to hospitals.
2 comments:
Your such a nice man Bo.:)
I dont mean to burst your bubble but they're not all nurses. The ones that clean your rooms are the janitors, or housekeepers. The ones that take your blood pressure temp , intake , output ect are Nurse aides or orderleys or as they are called now adays C.N.A.'s. The ones who come get you for the tests ect are techs from that particular department ect...Now days the nurses get paid pretty good but their load has been put on the CNA'S who make minimum wage.
I did have an ant farm one time it was so neat I remember getting it , but I dont remember what happened to it. That is a good comparison to a hospital.
I hope you have a good day.
I didn't see you mention anything about Surgical Technologists. Do you think we just sit around and watch tv all day (ok, sometimes we get to)
Just kidding - hospitals are very busy places and it's easy to forget for me that just another day on the job for me could be someone's worst day of their life. Your blog kinda put that in perspective.
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