Hospital Routines

Its an yearly ritual to have my mother admitted into a hospital for some complaint or the other for a few days and then we come back home. She is 84 now.

Each time I find a disturbing trend in the name of routine check up of patients by the nurses.

The patient is checked for BP and temperature. Every 3 to 4 hours is understandable. But checking every hour means disturbing the patient and the attendant. I can understand if the patient were admitted in the ICU (intensive care unit) for some emergency and needs to be monitored every hour.

Most often, the patient falls asleep nicely and she or he is woken up from deep sleep to record the BP and temperature every hour. I find this funny. Maybe the hospitals want to justify their charges, so this is done very regularly and promptly, besides so many tests whether they are useful for diognizing the problem or not. Scans, MRIs, blood tests, X-rays all fall under this category. Tests have become a racket and forms the major portion of any hospital bill.

The doctors' visits are far and few in-between and even if he does visit, it is not more than 5 minutes he spends with each patient. Does not even bother to listen to what the patient wants to convey. Doctors are impatient and try to walk towards the next patient as if in some great hurry.

Last year I felt it was a sheer torture to keep waking my mother up every hour for this. She said she wanted to go home and sleep undisturbed and get some real rest. In 24 hours there were 24 jottings made. Its terrible at nights to disturb a patient who is resting well with all medicines taken for the night.

We know the body rests during sleep to heal itself in many ways. We need that rest. We need no one to disturb us from a good night's sleep even if one is admitted into a hospital for treatment.

Mahalakshmi.