ER staff can only do so much with impatient patients
Recently I spent several hours in St. Paul’s Emergency. I’d fallen twice in the night and hurt my head. I arrived in the morning and stayed until early afternoon. I had several tests, including an electrocardiogram and a blood panel, and had my cheek stitched back together. ( I now have a bandage under my left eye, which I’m stupidly proud of in a “you should see the other guy” sort of way.)
I was treated with skill, patience and understanding. They never did determine what caused the falls, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. So I left with a fairly sanguine impression of health care in British Columbia and a brandnew appreciation for what goes into providing that care.
As I said, I was there in the morning, a quiet time. There were perhaps a dozen or so other people seeking treatment, and they were, almost to a man and woman, difficult.
One, a man with snakeskin boots and a tattoo on his face like an oil spill, was convinced he’d either had a heart attack or a stroke. He looked perfectly well to me, but I’m no doctor. Certainly he had no trouble speaking, given how forthcoming he was with his opinions ( all of them punctuated by the f- bomb) of the hospital, his treatment, the length of his wait and his eventual diagnosis. He turned out to be punch- drunk, or so he explained to his equally underwhelmed girlfriend.
After undergoing an effin’ cardiogram, the effin’ doctors wanted him to wear an effin’ heart monitor, but he effin’ left before they could effin’ attach it.
A woman was asked to provide a urine sample. The young medical student who attended to me ( I’m sure he’ll make a fine doctor one day) explained that he and his colleagues needed it to conduct a diagnosis.
No, she said, and gave several reasons why. The med student explained again and again and again that an effective treatment depended on it, but still she refused. All told, it took him about an hour and a half — perhaps longer — to convince her. When she finally gave in, it took her about five minutes to provide the sample.
Another woman simply moaned. She, too, was asked on several occasions to provide samples of one kind or another, but she simply lay there and groaned. Almost continuously.
Throughout the morning one of the hospital attendants appeared again and again in the waiting lounge to ask for a particular patient by name. Those of us waiting as well got to know the name because the attendant had to repeat it so often. The problem was that the patient refused to sit still and wait his turn. He kept wandering away, so he was never around to hear his name called.
Another man refused to let a nurse take his blood.
And all this occurred during the ward’s so- called quiet time. Imagine what it’s like on a Saturday night.
I was so impressed with the care I received that I felt I owed my caregivers some thanks. So I told them they’d done a wonderful job and that if this was an indication of the state of B. C. medical care, no one need worry.
You’d have thought I’d presented them with a sheaf of winning lottery tickets. No one ever says anything nice, they gushed; people only complain.
Of course, it occurred to me afterwards how much more efficient that care would have been if everyone involved had recognized that good treatment requires a little give as well as take. If the patients in question had waited to have their heart monitors installed, if they’d provided urine samples when they were asked for them, if they’d spoken when they were spoken to, if they hadn’t wandered off into other parts of the hospital.
But our culture isn’t like that. In 21st- century Canada, we want everything and take responsibility for nothing. “I’m sorry, it’s my fault” are words that have been expunged from modern parlance.
The price, among other things, is a modern hospital emergency ward where nothing moves as quickly or efficiently as it could. Or should. The people on staff do their best — my own experience convinced me of that.
The same cannot be said of the people they’re charged to look after.