Our Health-Care System
There was a time - and it seems a time now, out of the dim past - when people had confidence in hospitals. Away back then, when a medical emergency arose, you sped to the emergency room of your local hospital. And you waited for attention. Patiently, if you weren't in too much pain, with the knowledge that a health professional, although obviously harried, would be attending to you shortly. Which did, actually, happen. Although things got progressively and wearisomely worse as time went on. And then it was a good idea to seek other medical help, elsewhere, in short order.
Hospitals away back then were thought of as sterile theatres of medical care. Well-scrubbed and sterilized places, where hygiene-conscious attendants assiduously looked to the needs of patients. And where a hospital cleaning staff was always on duty, ensuring that if a speck of dust appeared somewhere it was speedily removed - much less tracked-in dirt - much less viral agents because everything was scrubbed down to a degree of gleaming perfection. (That may have been a hopeful myth, a kind of urban legend, because I can recall, almost 50 years ago, when I was admitted to hospital for the birth of our first child, my amazement at noting what looked suspiciously like a grey smudge of dirt ringing the woodwork of the bathroom I had been using.)
It's fairly well acknowledged now that hospitals are first-rate laboratories for the dangerous growth of deadly spores, communicable viruses, worrisome germs and what is generally known as hospital-acquired staphylococcus. Readily communicable from one infected patient to another hapless patient. Nurses and other attendants may carry germs from one patient to another, most commonly. Although nursing and medical practitioners certainly know better, they are neglectful in observing the first line of defence in treating patients, by not washing up adequately between patients.
There has been a fairly well-publicized emergence, and a growing menace within hospital settings of Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), a bacterium responsible for difficult-to-treat infections in humans. Because of where they work, nurses in particular are susceptible to picking up MRSA (colonized by the bacterium, therefore carrying it), and when they attend to the needs of already-immuno-compromised patients the result can be calamitous, leading to massive infections resistant to efficacious treatment, and finally death for the most frail of patients. It would help immeasurably if contaminated waste and linens were properly disposed of, and germ-laden surfaces assiduously wiped on a continual basis with effective sterilizing agents.
And then there is the reality of understaffed hospitals resulting in overworked medical-health personnel. There is only so much even a conscientious professional health-care worker well endowed with a good measure of compassion can accomplish throughout the period of a day. When admissions to hospital are ongoing and urgent, and those whose charge it is to look to patient care are too exhausted to even think properly, let alone react professionally. The situation leads to instances enough when misdiagnoses occur, and when incorrect dosages of prescribed medicines are given, with predictable (and sometimes unpredictable) results.
This is not the best of all possible worlds. People who are taken seriously ill and who require immediate care, may not receive it as speedily and as efficaciously as they deserve. It is becoming increasingly stressful for people to have to enter hospitals for care when they are aware of all the difficulties they face in receiving proper treatment may well lead them to a worse place than they were before entering. The fall-out from some treatments, some types of surgeries, some kinds of prescribed medications occasionally result in no effective change in the original condition, and sometimes a worsening of the condition itself.
On the other side of the ledger, however, there is the inescapable reality that people are living longer, healthier lives. Medical science has successfully been able to reach a fairly broad consensus on treatment protocols that have proven extremely effective. Pharmaceuticals have been developed that have been extremely useful in eradicating some inimical health symptoms, and in prolonging life beyond what was once a normal life expectancy. People are becoming more aware of their personal responsibility in protecting their health and extending their lives, through better nutrition and lifestyles.
In the final analysis, there is much to be done to improve the level of health care that Canadians can rely upon. It's long been said that the problems that exist go well beyond the need for additional public funding. That attitudes and prescriptive alterations in how health care is delivered must change. With a population that is steadily aging, the current system is being overwhelmed by seniors requiring more attention, on a greater scale, and consuming larger portions of the public health-care investment.
A wealthy, technologically advanced society can surely do better than what we're currently being offered. We deserve no less. We should be demanding, collectively, that more attention be paid at the level of nurse-practitioners, nurse-staffing, hospital cleaning staff in our hospitals. And an urgent expansion of available patient beds, to augment the clearly insufficient numbers currently available, necessitating the use of hospital corridors as multiple-use health treatment rooms.
Hospitals away back then were thought of as sterile theatres of medical care. Well-scrubbed and sterilized places, where hygiene-conscious attendants assiduously looked to the needs of patients. And where a hospital cleaning staff was always on duty, ensuring that if a speck of dust appeared somewhere it was speedily removed - much less tracked-in dirt - much less viral agents because everything was scrubbed down to a degree of gleaming perfection. (That may have been a hopeful myth, a kind of urban legend, because I can recall, almost 50 years ago, when I was admitted to hospital for the birth of our first child, my amazement at noting what looked suspiciously like a grey smudge of dirt ringing the woodwork of the bathroom I had been using.)
It's fairly well acknowledged now that hospitals are first-rate laboratories for the dangerous growth of deadly spores, communicable viruses, worrisome germs and what is generally known as hospital-acquired staphylococcus. Readily communicable from one infected patient to another hapless patient. Nurses and other attendants may carry germs from one patient to another, most commonly. Although nursing and medical practitioners certainly know better, they are neglectful in observing the first line of defence in treating patients, by not washing up adequately between patients.
There has been a fairly well-publicized emergence, and a growing menace within hospital settings of Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), a bacterium responsible for difficult-to-treat infections in humans. Because of where they work, nurses in particular are susceptible to picking up MRSA (colonized by the bacterium, therefore carrying it), and when they attend to the needs of already-immuno-compromised patients the result can be calamitous, leading to massive infections resistant to efficacious treatment, and finally death for the most frail of patients. It would help immeasurably if contaminated waste and linens were properly disposed of, and germ-laden surfaces assiduously wiped on a continual basis with effective sterilizing agents.
And then there is the reality of understaffed hospitals resulting in overworked medical-health personnel. There is only so much even a conscientious professional health-care worker well endowed with a good measure of compassion can accomplish throughout the period of a day. When admissions to hospital are ongoing and urgent, and those whose charge it is to look to patient care are too exhausted to even think properly, let alone react professionally. The situation leads to instances enough when misdiagnoses occur, and when incorrect dosages of prescribed medicines are given, with predictable (and sometimes unpredictable) results.
This is not the best of all possible worlds. People who are taken seriously ill and who require immediate care, may not receive it as speedily and as efficaciously as they deserve. It is becoming increasingly stressful for people to have to enter hospitals for care when they are aware of all the difficulties they face in receiving proper treatment may well lead them to a worse place than they were before entering. The fall-out from some treatments, some types of surgeries, some kinds of prescribed medications occasionally result in no effective change in the original condition, and sometimes a worsening of the condition itself.
iatrogenic[ī′atrōjen′ik, yat-]Etymology: Gk, iatros, physician, genein, to producecaused by treatment or diagnostic procedures. An iatrogenic disorder is a condition that is caused by medical personnel or procedures or that develops through exposure to the environment of a health care facility. See also nosocomial. iatrogenesis, iatrogeny, n.Mosby's Medical Dictionary, 8th edition. © 2009, Elsevier.
In a civilized society people have always viewed hospitals as places of trustfully reliable professional medical care and respite from conditions that threaten the stability of their health and longevity. Hospitals are settings where people should feel reassured on entering them, that their ills will be properly cared for, and when they leave, they will be the better for their brief interregnum between compromised health and a new lease on life. More's the pity for the reality that has taken the place of the ideal that no longer exists to the same degree as formerly pertained.
On the other side of the ledger, however, there is the inescapable reality that people are living longer, healthier lives. Medical science has successfully been able to reach a fairly broad consensus on treatment protocols that have proven extremely effective. Pharmaceuticals have been developed that have been extremely useful in eradicating some inimical health symptoms, and in prolonging life beyond what was once a normal life expectancy. People are becoming more aware of their personal responsibility in protecting their health and extending their lives, through better nutrition and lifestyles.
In the final analysis, there is much to be done to improve the level of health care that Canadians can rely upon. It's long been said that the problems that exist go well beyond the need for additional public funding. That attitudes and prescriptive alterations in how health care is delivered must change. With a population that is steadily aging, the current system is being overwhelmed by seniors requiring more attention, on a greater scale, and consuming larger portions of the public health-care investment.
A wealthy, technologically advanced society can surely do better than what we're currently being offered. We deserve no less. We should be demanding, collectively, that more attention be paid at the level of nurse-practitioners, nurse-staffing, hospital cleaning staff in our hospitals. And an urgent expansion of available patient beds, to augment the clearly insufficient numbers currently available, necessitating the use of hospital corridors as multiple-use health treatment rooms.
Labels: Canada, Health, Human Relations, Science, Social-Cultural Deviations
posted by Pieface @ 5:50 PM
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