WARNING! DANGER! HOSPITAL!
This blog post was featured in the Huffington Post on October 18, 2017.
I have a good friend who is a deputy manager of a large hospital. What is your role, I asked him? I am in charge of quality control or, better said, professional protocols.
I did not understand the role, so he amplified: Thousands of people die in hospitals due to mistakes doctors make. His role is to analyze mistakes and improve protocols.
This was just an interesting statistic till I almost became the statistic.
For reasons no one knows, I have a destroyed shoulder. Need a new one. Was not a problem till now because I do not exercise to the degree it will destroy a shoulder. It became a problem when I started doing dialysis through the same hand attached to that shoulder.
In dialysis, you need to keep the hand in a certain angle and not move it for four hours. Three times a week.
My shoulder does not like that. I do not know if it was a nerve that revolted or a muscle that showed displeasure, but after my most recent dialysis I had the most, most, most excruciating pain imaginable. Honest, I would have committed suicide to stop the pain. I took four painkillers. Nada. I was hyperventilating from the pain, so I swallowed a lot of air. Now I had strong pain in my chest. Started throwing up. Nonstop.
My wife rushed me to the emergency room.
Now here is what happened:
Emergency room doctors have to practice triage and decide who is the most important patient to get the doctors attention. Pain in the shoulder is not on the top of the list. The doctors did not see me. Instructed the nurse to just sedate me and conduct a CT scan of my shoulder. She, being a nurse that follows instructions well did as told. Put me on my back and did the scan except I was unconscious and vomiting like crazy. No one told that the doctor and she did not tell him either.
My wife pleaded with the technicians not to put me on my back because I was throwing up.
She was escorted by security to the waiting room, too hysterical. I was put on my back. I kept throwing up and inhaled my own vomit. Now it was not just a shoulder pain anymore. I got pneumonia, became critically ill, and had to be taken to ICU (Intensive Care Unit). They had to suck the vomit out and use respirators for me to breathe. A social worker went to my wife to inform her that I was in critical condition, and it would be a good idea if she informed the family.
Topaz immediately flew in from New York. Shoham cancelled his lecture in Brazil and Sasa his music performances. That was it. There was a chance I was not going to make it to my eightieth birthday.
For two days, I was unconscious. On respirators. With a pipe up my throat.
It is over. I survived. And I learned a lot about life in a hospital.
It is a well-accepted theory that for a healthy life, three ingredients are needed: eat right, exercise, and get enough sleep (and have no stress). Well, hospitals do not follow this theory well.
Forget exercise in a hospital. As for food, my hospital prided itself on having a first-class dining service. Room service. A four-page-long menu with declarations of their mission to serve only healthy food.
Really?
How about bacon for breakfast? Pizza for lunch? When I challenged the dietitian, she said that it was up to the patient to decide what to order.
WHAT???
As for sleep, forget it. It appears as if the hospital is organized around efficient utilization of the doctors and nurses and not around effective medical intervention. There is a shift change at 7 a.m., so they wake up patients at 6 a.m. to do checkups. Wake the patient at night every few hours for one reason or another? Why not have one wake up and do all that is necessary in one shift?
Hospitals are enormous buildings. Starting to look like the Pentagon. It looks to me like a perfect way to get all the microbes and bacteria of all possible diseases in one place. Is this architecture really for better medical treatment or just to facilitate administration?
Also, we must be very cautious now of the trend toward specialization. The medical profession is getting more and more specialized. They know more and more about less and less, and the general practitioner, who is supposed to coordinate everything and supervise what the specialists do, is a dying breed. Not enough money in being a family doctor. Trust me, you need the family doctor as your advocate. When I left the hospital, I had a very interesting experience. I wanted to hug every tree on my way out. I loved every flower I saw. The clouds looked so friendly. The sunshine was so warming. How come I did not see that till now? Apparently, one must experience death to appreciate life.
Just thinking,
Ichak Kalderon Adizes
Oi, we are grateful that God preserves our friend and mentor.We are praying for you, Haddidi, each day.
I am sorry for your terrible ordeal, Ichak. I don’t know if you or your readers are aware of the medical term “iatrogenic disease”. It is any disease caused by by medical treatment.
It is also the 3rd largest cause of death in the USA, right after cancer and heard disease. Here is a good summary article to read:
http://www.yourmedicaldetective.com/public/335.cfm
In a medical setting like a hospital, one of the major causes of iatrogenic illness is that the hospital is designed to be efficient (administration-centric) rather than being effective (patient-centric).
So there are plenty of opportunities for horror shows such as the one you survived, and the one I survived as well.
Speaking personally, I am much more concerned about patient abuse and neglect when entering the nursing home environment than the hospital. It is based on a for profit business model that preys on a families inability to mercifully “pull the plug”, but rather keep the patient alive as long as possible, using our advanced medical capabilities to extend someone’s life indefinitely.
There are so many people in nursing homes who wish for nothing more than closure – but instead are tortured indefinitely, as if they were prisoners in Guantanamo Bay.
And – it is a well known fact that doctors who are going to lose their capacities almost never choose the nursing home, but rather self-deliverance. Just ask your own doctors what they will do, if and when that time comes that they need to either check out or be checked in to a “home”.
So if I had the time, money and expertise to do ONE thing to improve our medical system, and combat iatrogenic disease – that is where I would start.
This is beautifully written and all true.
I was in a big hospital with a major surgery last year. I don’t think I ever got into the 3rd or 4th stages of sleep. Only people who’ve had hospital stays recently can be expected to believe this. This hospital where I was has a section where elected officials stay when they have surgeries (it’s in DC). Presumably a doctor serves as coordinator in that section.
I am so sorry for the pain you have experienced. Your ability to share this so clearly is a gift you have for us. I have seen some of what you have shared. Finally being close to the family and your boys coming to be with you has healing power as well. Be well my teacher. The world needs you.
Very well put Dr Adizes…everyone in the hospitals are only looking into technical details, wait for reports, go only by parameters, forgetting the human aspects , needs of a being …..
Common sense is so scarce!
My father passed away in a hospital and on hind sight I feel I would have done many things so differently ….
But as a first timer in a corporate hospital, it’s all so intimidating for the family ….
All for money??
Yes
Sad but true!
Ichaak, Veshaá Tova! That you are back to life. Un cariñosisimo abrazo.
Sam
Samuel where are you? How are you? Give me your phone number
Your article typically reveals the patients all over world suffer from,so called specialists,as Late Chariji Maharaj has expressed,one will see only,shoulder, but not forearm,the family physician was best,still we have few in India,my Father was a family doctor,.in his lifetime 40 years, no-case of fatal incident,we miss it very much today,good your article reveals the status of Hospitals,,the sufferer is the patient,
thanks
I hear you! So loud and clear as always. I hope those who run the hospital business will take something from it. Thanks for being such an eloquent voice for us all. We need you!
I am grateful that you are still with us. I have been keeping up with this but didn’t have the details till now. I love you, pray for you and hold your total return to health in my heart and mind. Blessings dear friend.
What a horrible experience, aptly described. Sorry you had to endure that. I can’t imagine a nurse not rolling you on your side. Everybody (apparently not everybody) would know to do this, especially after your wife told her.
Best wishes for you, Ichak, and your family.
Dear Ichak — Glad my “virtual guru” survived “Hospital Hell”. Wishing you the best of health and stress-less long life.
Some folks speak-up to the Doctor-Centric-Hospital-Establishment. E.G.
http://www.citizensforpatientsafety.org/
And Dr. Mercola is always there for us
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/10/09/preventable-medical-errors.aspx
Be Well.
Dear Dr Adizes. Delighted that your life has been extended. So look forward to all your blogs; save them in a folder. My younger brother who just turned sixty was not as fortunate. He had just returned from a holiday with his family in India. Attended the Santana concert. Then he started loosing feeling in his lower limbs. He was admitted to a private clinic in Johannesburg. Within a month it was over. This happened two years ago but the memory is still painful. Fully agree with you; the medical profession has become one of the biggest money spinners. I so long for the days when our GP used his stethoscope, fingers and his innate medical expertise to make a diagnosis. No blood tests, scans and what not. Wishing you fulfilling days with your loved ones, colleagues and the multitude of people whose lives you have touched.
Whow whow whow !! First. Estas en mir oraciones Dr Ichak !!!
Second: No se si sea adecuado agregar esto, pero desafortunadamente como en todo y bien los mencionas, los recursos son limitados, y no todos los doctores ni enfermeras tienen el mismo criterio. Una lastima te sucedió esto. El objetivo de un hospital privado es salvar vidas…siempre y cuando haya utilidades. Desafortunadamente es así. Esto me recuerda a una imagen que vi recientemente, te anexo el link.