Hospitals suck

[LARAGORN]

I have just got home from an 8 day stay at the regions largest hospital, and it was a very discouraging experience. The intelligence level of most of the staff was borderline retarded. I spent 24hrs in the emergency department untill the 'specialist' finally listend to me. I had to tell the doctor what tests to ask for and what to look for in the results. Once they actually found the blood clotts, it was almost 2 days before i saw a doctor again. When the doctor did show up I had to get a medical book to explain to him what had happend, in my perticular case. It is a good thing I am a lucky guy, or else I would be dead. Only 10% servive this type of blood clott, symply because the doctors dont know what to look for. They spot it right away on the coriners table.  Blood clotts are not a very common thing in men my age, and if I had not learned about them a few years ago, and understood how they work and how they effect the body, you would have never seen another post from me again.
It also seems the 'human' factor has been lost in the health care system of my country. The treatment of the elderly was heart wrenching, all dignity stripped from them with no regard whatsoever of privacy or compassion.

Ok I'm not gonna rant about everything here because I would easily surpass the 20,000 character limit. I would like to hear if anyone else has had a less than enjoyable stay in a hospital.

[Monketh]

What is your country?  I cannot say I have experienced that level of incompetence here. (US, Ohio (Midwest))

[Xordan]

I can understand a lack of compassion from the staff, especially from nurses. During their career they have to deal with thousands of people who will die. They'd have mental breakdowns if they let themselves feel much emotion towards patients. As for the incompetence... I can't say I see that over here in the UK. Maybe you were just unlucky? Or maybe Canada is just bad for medical care?

[Gyerfry Stoemsaber]

Now who said that? My dentist rocks! Canada rocks!

[Phinehas]

Meh, Canada and their government health care... Of course I'm Canadian, too. But I'll choose to use the U.S. citizenship for this conversation.

If it's any help, I've had a worse stay in the hospital in Ukraine when I was five...

[Datruth]

The u.s aint that great either.

There are thousands of cases of hospital accidents that lead to deaths each year.

Where you guys might not be efficient we are more careless.

Choose the lesser of two evils

[Peacer]

The problem in Denmark is probably the long time yuo have to wait to get operated, sometimes 6 months before it's your turn. I've never been on the hopsital myself except for visits and birth. I'm a lucky guy .
and dentist... I brush my teeth well only thing wrong with me is up here 

[zanzibar]

Public healthcare's main priority is service.  Private healthcare's main priority is proffit.  And despite the facts, public healthcare is actually far more efficient than privately owned health care.  This is a fact which has been proven by study after study, but special interest groups are constantly trying to cover it up.  When public healthcare performs poorly, it's almost always due to deliberate underfunding.  Conservative governments sabotage the different parts of the social system so they can claim that things like public education, public healthcare, and public transportation are bad.  They aren't bad.  If corporation-friendly governments would stop sabotaging them, then we'd be just fine.

My dad was admitted to hospital a year ago for severe pains in his abdomen.  They treated him as if he had gas, or some other digestive problem.  They even gave him laxitatives.  The pain didn't go away, and after a few days it was so bad he felt like he could die.

He went to a different doctor.  After just one minute, the doctor diagnosed him with a ruptured appendix and they rushed him into the ER.  Because of the hospital he went to first, my dad was walking around with a ruptured appendix for five days before being properly diagnosed.

I'm not a fan of hospitals.  I had to go to the hospital too many times this summer and I just got sick of it.  Most of the time I wasn't the patient - I was one of the few drivers at the camp I was working at, so I ended up taking people to the hospital whenever the need came up.  But what did it to me is how they treated one of my friends and co-workers.  A fourty pound milk bag had crushed her arm vertically, breaking it.  But the doctor diagnosed it as something to do with the muscle, so he didn't put the arm in a cast.  The pain didn't go away.  She went to another doctor, and he diagnosed it as something to do with her hand.  She pointed out a dark line on her arm in the xray where she was feeling the pain but he just dismissed it.  She goes back.  Another diagnoses says that she might have a broken arm, but probably not.  A nurse who happened to be in the room saw the x-ray and freaked out.  She said that it looked like "thousands of microfractures" along one side of the arm, an injury entirely consistent with the force of the blow.  The doctor dismissed the nurse's opinion.  We ended up finding out that the nurse was right, but my friend had to take care of it herself because the hospital wouldn't do what needed to be done.

Why are some people so stupid?  It's just evil the way some of these professionals behave.  And it seems to me that their professionalism only gets worse once you start talking about disorders of the mind.

[Shangreloo]

Public healthcare's main priority is service.  Private healthcare's main priority is proffit.

The biggest problem in US healthcare are HMO's, which are often owned by insurance companies.

In the US a great many people cannot afford health care, more and more each year cannot even afford the prescription medications recommended by their physicains.. provided they even get to see a physician in the fisrt place.

[WiseKran]

WiseKran has had several unhappy trips to the hospital in his 16 years.

A few years back, I fell from a tree and shattered my elbow, and most of my forearm. As you can imagine, I was in excruciating pain. I was rushed to the hospital, only to sit in the emergency room for about 40 minutes. Now I know they have to take life threatening cases first, and I would have it no other way, But they should really be faster about that or something, I mean. My arm was twisted, broken, swollen and bleeding I was pretty bad by the time they got to me.

We then proceeded to the x-ray room, and the guy who worked there was none too kind, or too gentle.

I had to get the cast set by a "professional", and 6 months later when I got the cast off, I see another doctor, and it turns out He made a mistake  for the rest of my life, my forarm will not rotate, the bones dont cross over.   I cant turn my hand palm up.     This means that I will never get my change back from drivethrough windows so long as I live.




Now lets see here, The time I broke my collarbone, I was taken by ambulence to the ER, and they fixed me up pretty good. The guys were nice, and It was handled fast and efficient, no complaints.


But In general, I find hospital staff to be mostly comprised of low-lives. and the only nice people that work there tend to be over-worked, over-stressed, over-tired.   Usually the way they care for people is in sort of an indifferent manner, you feel more like an object, or a slab of meat when your in the hospital, rather than a Human being.

[bilbous]

Almost all problems with health care are do to financial considerations. Here in Canada the Pols kepp funneling money into the system but a large amout of it gets sucked into the administrative stream and the various bureaucracies. Another big problem is drug prices. Big drug companies jack the price of newly patented drugs sky high and when the patent expires play legal games to extend the protection. In the States a lot of the problem is that the HMO's tend to focus on the bottom dollar more than on patient welfare. Some doctors buckle under the pressure to keep costs down and their duty to their patients. Their duty doesn't do them much good if they can't keep a job and pay off their tuition.

[ThomPhoenix]

In the Netherlands public health care is fine, really.
While our family was on vacation my sister suddenly couldn't walk very well, it was the end of our vacation anyway, so we drove back to my country and went to the nearest hospital. A week later she already had surgery.

My own experience with hospitals was a little worse.
We were once walking in a forest when we couldn't go further. It had rained a lot the day before, and what once was a path was now a small river. Of course everyone could jump over, except for me, I was like 5 years old. So my dad had the brilliant idea to throw me over it. Of course I landed in a very wrong way and broke my arm.

My mother, having worked in a hospital as a nurse, immediately recognized the broken arm. We went to the hospital and got an X-ray. But of course the doctor told us my arm was fine. My mum pointed out a black line on the X-ray, but the docter told us it was nothing. Of course my mother was frustrated, apparently her medical knowledge had become outdated.....
Until the docter calls us up after I had a night of horrific pain, he had looked at the X-ray again, and apparently my arm was broken. We went to the hospital again and everything was fine.

[Phinehas]

*Matt tilts his head to hear what the small robed man on his shoulder is saying and smiles and nods.*

We got a little bored with the ranting, but did read Zanzibar's. One thing I have to point out for amusement's sake is:

And despite the facts, public healthcare is actually far more efficient than privately owned health care. 

Heh heh.

[zanzibar]

*Matt tilts his head to hear what the small robed man on his shoulder is saying and smiles and nods.*

We got a little bored with the ranting, but did read Zanzibar's. One thing I have to point out for amusement's sake is:

And despite the facts, public healthcare is actually far more efficient than privately owned health care. 

Heh heh.

What I meant was that even though private business is supposed to care about maximizing fiscal proffits, public healthcare institutions are actually more effecient monetarily.  The fact is that public healthcare is supposed to care about service more than money, and despite that fact, they are still more efficient.

[Drey]

I can understand a lack of compassion from the staff, especially from nurses. During their career they have to deal with thousands of people who will die. They'd have mental breakdowns if they let themselves feel much emotion towards patients. As for the incompetence... I can't say I see that over here in the UK. Maybe you were just unlucky? Or maybe Canada is just bad for medical care?

* Drey posts xordan his scrubs dvds so he can get a better understanding of hospitals.

me myself avoid hospitals/doctors... have only ended up there due to broken bones and the like