Comment by aucisson_masque
9 months ago
> I experienced this repeatedly. We were admitted to the hospital for over a week when my daughter contracted viral meningitis (the scariest experience of my life). Even while working with incredible infectious disease doctors, I still had to fight and constantly remind people what the next steps were during our admission. Nobody is watching over you - it’s your job to organize things and ensure they’re on track. I had to coordinate between the infectious disease departments and neurology departments and make sure the people doing the lumbar puncture on my 9-month-old daughter weren’t just residents practicing on my child but experts who had conducted the procedure countless times before. You must Advocate for yourself and the ones you love.
Don't know why his behavior wasn't noticed more in the comments but he's absolutely entitled.
Hospitals and everything have limited resources, by being the asshole who request things to go fast for him and only have the best of the best to practice on his daughter, he just deprived someone else daughter from good care.
This is selfishness, unless the nurses and doctors were napping, he shouldn't have that kind of behavior detrimental to everyone else. I couldn't read further what he got to say but, coming from this man, i don't see how it could be interesting or useful.
I don't have anything to prove it but the whole thing smell fishy, when he goes to these 'concierge doctors', of course they are going to find things that are not right and were 'missed' by his regular doctor. That's literally their business.
if you went there and you were told 'nop, everything is fine. Keep doing what you do', you would go back to your GP and forget about it. But if he frightens you with bloodwork that show 'not optimal' in big red, tells you how wrong your gp is and how you should listen to him, you're going to think this guy know so much more and deserve my money. It's business.
I trust the national health guidelines: eat healthy, do at least 30 min of activity per day and lift weights.
Everything else feel like nuisance, especially coming from folk like that.
You're conflating advocacy, which indeed he is entitled to, with how the hospital is allocating resources and if and how they apply competent resources.
Life or death procedures aren't a time for "you get what you get and don't have a fit."
How do people become experts on doing dangerous procedures on infants if they're not allowed to do dangerous procedures on infants until they're experts?
I agree with most of what the author wrote, even a decent amount in the paragraph in question, but not wanting residents to get hands on experience while under the direct supervision of experts just because it is you or a loved one on the receiving end is not a reasonable ask. You have to do things to become an expert on doing them, and that means someone has to be on the receiving end of someone with little or no experience doing them. They get experience doing similar procedures in lower risk settings, etc., but eventually when it comes time for someone to do their first lumbar puncture on an infant, it's better if they're doing it under the watchful eye of someone who has done many.
Hospitals are full of 'life and death' situation. If everyone were to behave like that, things would stop working or be severely slowed because you can't work correctly when you got that guy breathing on your neck constantly. You lose time answering to load of demands from people getting angrier and angrier because they feel that they don't get the care they need. That makes you angry. Other people are getting less attention, they get angrier.. Etc etc.
I believe you have the right to say it when things are not right, but there is a fine line between that and the behavior he described.
And he wrote that he went to an expensive hospital, this isn't some low tier hospital filled with under qualified, under staffed personals.
I think you really pretty fundamentally missed the point of what he's saying. Perhaps you've never had to confront the full brunt of the bureaucracy of a large-scale medical provider.
If you've got a serious condition, you really do need to have a patient advocate, whether that's yourself or a family member or someone you're paying to fulfill the role or some combination thereof. The medical systems I've encountered for non-trivial care (US HMO, US PPO, Belgium, Norway) just aren't designed for holistic patient care. Each department does their own thing, and it's just luck if there's someone watching over the whole process from the individual patient's standpoint.
Perhaps you took exception to the comment about looking for an expert instead of a newbie (a resident, in the text) working on the author's 9-month-old. One could argue that that's a different issue than the general need for a patient advocate. Fair enough. But if I were watching out for my 9-month-old, I'd definitely want to ask about the track record of each of the doctors in the room. I mean, sure, new trainees need to practice somehow and all, and there's a tragedy of the commons there. But I certainly wouldn't brush someone off as "absolutely entitled" just because he wants the best care he can get for his 9-month-old.
I don't know, maybe it's just me seeing things differently.
I always thought that you got to choose wisely people that you need their expertise, especially in healthcare, but once you picked one hospital you got to commit and let them do their job.
I understand it's not easy when you are in charge of a 9 month old but you got to suffer through that.
If someone was to go so wrong that even an untrained eye could see, it's different.
Maybe I didn't have my fair share of bureaucracy. Maybe my standard are too low.
I sure did have my fair share of mistake when I went to emergencies, undiagnosed broken bones for instance. I never thought a second about requiring 'better' doctors, more competent nurses or more attention. I just accepted that it's thing that happens and nothing is perfect. Went back to the hospital 2 more times and eventually got everything back in order.