A patient’s health
Each and every day that goes by finds me questioning the profession I have loved and worked in since 1959. I am proud to say that I am a nurse even though I can no longer work due to heath problems. I know how things work and I really understand that technology has made diagnosing easier and supposedly more accurate. But where has the human element gone?
Just yesterday I was told by a friend how she was treated or really not treated by her doctor. She is an excellent nurse with many years of experience. Her job is to observe and report the signs and symptoms of illnesses to the doctors. So when she had a problem and reported it to her doctor she was not listened to. Nor did the doctor act upon what was going on. As the symptoms and pain got worse and she called the doctor again, this time the lab test were conclusive of an illness. Now the doctor went into super mode ordering more tests that would take days to complete. My friend was getting worse and in greater pain. When she called the office to get medication for a condition the doctor knew about, she was told to go to Urgent Care to sit for hours before being seen by any medical staff. Why was this necessary? Being a survivor of bone cancer with eleven operations under my belt, I had incidents of telling the doctors something was wrong. I was still being given pain pills which my doctor knew I hated. He kept assuring me that everything was going well and not to expect to get better so fast. After twice insisting something was wrong, they humored me and did an x-ray that indeed showed my surgically repaired arm had come apart. Back to the operating table I went.
Doctors please listen to the patients! We live in these bodies. No, we can’t diagnosis what’s going wrong but most of the time we can tell when it’s not working right. And yes, some patients are Hypochondriacs or are lonely and want some attention. But as doctors, you should have the ability to see through the haze to get to the truth.