A Patient's Reflection

[arthurbaird0]

In a hospital located somewhere in America, a young woman, a mother of three, steps out into a hallway as the elevator door closes behind her. She looks left then right before crossing, then it's down to the end of the hall to visit her husband recovering from surgery the day before. Opening the door, she sees him lying on his side, his back facing her, blood-soaked sheet covering him. Quickly she moves closer, pulling back the sheet and exposing a very large incision that is leaking blood from where a tube had been. Making her way around the other side, she sees his face is agonizingly pale, his eyes closed, his body shaking uncontrollably. Something has seriously gone wrong she thinks to herself, trying not to panic as she darts out the door, down the hall to the nursing station, to get help.

My husband needs help!” she keeps saying. Something's really wrong with him!” she tells the nurse, who asks her to hold on a moment. The woman looks down at the floor for a moment, thinking he could be in serious trouble. Upset, she looks up again. There, suddenly out of nowhere, a friendly face walks around the corner. It is another nurse--a friend who just happened to be on her way to visit. The woman rushes over quickly, telling her friend something has gone terribly wrong with her husband. Surprised, the nurse moves quickly with her friend back to the patient's room.

She immediately begins assessing his condition, calling the patient's name over and over with little to no response. The nurse walks around the other side of the bed only to find the pain pump he's attached to broken. Determined, the nurse sets out to get this patient the care he needs desperately.

It is a haunting memory--one my family and I will ever forget, because I was the patient. A lucky patient at that. My family's experience was a regrettably predictable result. If it hadn't been me, it would've been someone else.

In 1984, the Institute of Medicine estimated 98,000 Americans die each year from medical errors. In September of 2013, new research purports that over the last 30 years, medical errors have grown more than 400 percent, to nearly 400,000 patients annually.” By the time you're finished reading this, two people will have had their lives either altered or ended because of medical errors. Serious harm seems to be 10- to 20-fold more common than lethal harm, and that epidemic of patient harm in hospitals must be taken more serious!” The increase in harm to patients is happening despite numerous nationwide efforts to reduce medication errors. The same is true of many other classes of preventable harm.

At AnyWhere in America Hospital, nurses struggle with the constant and continued interruptions in the flow of patient care. These costly system failures persist because of the way in which nurses are forced to problem-solve. It is exactly the constant need to work around system problems that creates even more difficulty in taking care of patients. And because they cannot care for their patients without jumping the system hurdles immediately in their path, priority goes to treating the system failure while their patients wait, absent of the care they need.

From my first days as a worker in healthcare, I have seen the awesome responsibility and daily difficulties of nurses and the constant and consistent process failures that negatively impact patient care. This essay and my work, is for them and for all of us who depend on them.