High-Value and Low-Value Patients

Some patient populations are highly prized in our society while others are very much devalued. This is because American society views some clusters of people as 'high value' and others as 'low value.' Do you believe that all people were created equally? Do you feel that all individuals are treated equally? Nurses Announcements Archive Article

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englishgeek

60 Posts

Wow. This is an amazing thread. It's something I've noticed without noticing many times and now it has words. Had a beautiful, funny lady of about 65 in the other day. She has non-Hodgkins lymphoma. Where I've watched other patients whispered about: "drug seeker." "He just wants his drugs." "She'll be calling for pain meds all day!" For this lady everyone bent over backwards to try to get her pain down. They should have. But non-cancer patients probably have hard to control pain, too. Hopefully as a nurse I will see all my patients as high value.

Specializes in Acute Care Pediatrics.

I'm glad this post got dredged up..... I find it interesting and in a lot of ways it echoes my sentiments exactly.

I work in a large children's hospital. 12 floors of specialties and med surg. We get a lot of press and we are a huge community staple.

And our oncology floor is the ringer.

Someone holds a fundraiser for the hospital? Its the cancer kids who are profiled to pull the heart strings. Benefits and survivor stories are all over our social media.

I work on a floor with patients who suffer from another chronic and terminal illness. The disease gets no federal funding, no research dollars. You never see their sweet faces on the front pages, and it ****** me off. I actually called our hospital out on it. LoL...

Bedside pediatrics does not equal sad cancer kids. There are so many horrifying battles that kids face out there, they are no less sad. I have people always ask me... How do you do it? How do you watch kids die of cancer? I don't. I see them die in other ways. But because their disease does not project the same Fault in our Stars tingly feelings, you just don't know about it.

It's a soapbox for me.... And I will tell you it did inspire me to work my ass off for *my* kids.

I work in a large children's hospital. 12 floors of specialties and med surg. We get a lot of press and we are a huge community staple.

And our oncology floor is the ringer.

Someone holds a fundraiser for the hospital? Its the cancer kids who are profiled to pull the heart strings. Benefits and survivor stories are all over our social media.

I work on a floor with patients who suffer from another chronic and terminal illness. The disease gets no federal funding, no research dollars. You never see their sweet faces on the front pages, and it ****** me off. I actually called our hospital out on it. LoL....

I know that many families of children with cystic fibrosis at my local children's hospital feel this way. They have kids with a chronic life-shortening condition, some regularly having long term admissions throughout their entire lives. They have no special facilities on their ward, it is the same as any other med-surg unit. The oncology ward, on the other hand, gets many donations and big fundraisers, has their own fairy garden, multi-million dollar teen unit, big family kitchen, heaps of entertainment technology etc etc. They also get regular visits from local celebrities, sportsmen, beauty therapists, have special activities etc which the other units do not get. To add insult to injury, several families complained to the state's main newspaper of "third world conditions" on the oncology ward, subsequently getting several front page stories and even more fundraising. It really is sad.

Libby1987

3,726 Posts

I agree with so much written here but admittedly did not read every post.

Ruby Vee's perspective is interesting, I would have not thought it would feel that way. I totally get the breast cancer perspective, but it's the knee replacement that surprises me. Knees are so highly sought after in home health being a money maker and I imagine the same for the hosptials. Certainly for the surgeons. Most of our knee patients have few or less symptomatic medical problems, chronic illness doesn't see a lot of elective high infection risk joint replacements IME and they are the easiest patients for a home health nurse, they don't have the social issues and they're anxious to get back on the golf course or simply back to work. IME they're otherwise high functioning whether retired or still in the work force.