The Real World Hospital's

2009-07-14T23:41:00.000-06:00

In the real world I am 44 years old going on 45 and married with one 2 yr old little girl, my entire life has been one of struggle, claw, scrape, and try to make it how I can. I have worked in the fast food industry starting at 18 yrs old. I worked at the Whataburger, Mcdonalds at 20 yrs old at Wendy's , ....well you get the point. I finally buckled down and got a diploma in 1992 from a tech school in Arizona as a Respiratory Care Practitioner. I made a living as a Respiratory Care Technician. Man! I thought I had it made, I was making a good hourly rate, living with my parents, spending money like it grew on trees. I really believed that everything in my life was going to be okay, then no sooner had I started that it started crashing down. I was employed at Vista Hills Hospital before hospitals became a multi-billion dollar business. Vista Hills was bought by the Columbia Corporation it was there first of many hospitals they would get there greedy little hands on. I really cared about my patients, and the hospital did as well, thats what I thought and was led to believe. Little did I know the old hospital I knew as Vista Hills, Vista Kills to others, was going to set the stage for what is now the Hospital Healthcare Reform. Let me tell you, what I experienced would make even a sailors mother blush, and will make you want to scout a hospital like a college football coach scouts a talented High School football Star, which you should do before you get sick and have to be hospitalized. I need to speak out for the many of people who had questions about mistakes, and questionable deaths of family members or distant relatives. The President needs to know this before, we go to socialized medicine, (one of my wifes law professors, believes that socialized medicine will never work). I've left many times for speaking out about injustices in the hospital work force , Its me against multi-million dollar companies. I have no help, But, I'm damb well gonna give them my best shot. Like I was saying, I thought I was doing excellent in my new career, until the hospital I worked in was sold to Columbia. Immediatley staffing was cut, affecting patient care, the nurses, who some, not all are there for YES, lets face it the Cashola! actually had to really run, and I do mean run to take care of there patient's.
In my 15 years of working in the medical field I started seeing people getting sicker not better in the hospitals, the first pandemic MRSA was whispered in the hallways, this patient, Mr. so and so has MRSA. What the hell is MRSA! I thought. The Hospitals Chief of Staff started having inservices about what MRSA was, (Methycillin Resistant, Staph, Aureaus). An ugly little bug that common antibiotics wont kill. They told us that MRSA will only infect people who are already immuno-suppressed, that means people who's immune system is poor or already comprimized. They went on to tell us that MRSA is spread mostly through unproper hand washing, or not washing hands at all. And to tell you the truth people, not all medical staff lives by this rule, especially if you are understaffed and behind on paperwork , which if anyone if you has ever been hospitalized is always the case, thats why your pain meds are usually late, and so is everything else, Now, let me be clear, this is not the only reasons but they account for most of the cases. Especially during the cold and flu season. So during the 90's just about every elderly patient that came into the hospital had MRSA especially the Nursing home patient's , and other extended stay medical facilities. The numbers where alarming but the hospital would not increase our staff, they didnt care! To much Benjamins (Dollars) to loose! Our Respiratory Director told us "do what you can" give Respiratory treatments to those who only 'need it', well sorry to say, thats just about all the patient's, Respiratory therapist had patients who had MRSA in there sputum, you see, anybody can get it in there cuts, bodily fluids, sores,etc. We all tried to do the best we could, the nurses had it harder, the ones that are there for the paycheck just did enough to not put there license in jeopardy. The rest of us prayed for our patient's and themselves. The worst part of this sad story is that this bug aided or killed a heck load of people, and the hospital knew it and did absolutley nothing. If today you ask to read the policy and procedure manual for any hospital it will tell you what the patient to nurse ratio is, in some of the hospitals I worked in the ratio was anywhere from 10-to-12 patient's to an RN with a team that includes an LVN pushing medication and a nurse
s aid and a respiratory therapist assigned to only the patient's with respiratory problems, but on any given day you will see 12 patient's and up to a team of RN, LVN , and Nurses aid. And the Hospitals don't care, they blame it on the Nursing shortage. Except when the Joint Commission of Hospitals come in to survey the hospital then everything is just peachy! I will continue this blog and try to answer any question to the best of my knowledge, please note that these stories are my experience only and do not account for all the U.S. Hopitals but my time in the medical field has shown me that they all work similarly rarely different. Until next time, keep it real.