Thursday, September 9, 2010

Urgent need

A co-worker of mine gets an urgent call from one of her patient's the other night. "Hurry, come quick to my room, hurryyyyyyyyy!!!!!!!!!!" So she races down the hall to see what is wrong with the patient. The patient replies "I need you to get me my purse, there is some face cream I want to buy on this infomercial." Seriously??? That is the urgent need? Ahhhh...#$#$^%!&&#@.

It is getting so beyond ridiculous what nursing in a hospital setting is turning into. No longer are we "nursing" people back to health...we are too busy portraying ourselves as customer service reps who will do whatever, whenever & however it takes so that the hospital can get a good rating when they send out the survey after the patient's visit.

It's not the hospital's fault. It's the govt. They send out surveys to everyone that stays in the hospital except those living in a nursing home, frequent flyers, alcoholics or Baker Acts/drug overdoses. If a hospital doesn't score high, then the govt (Medicare/Medicaid) doesn't have to pay the hospital. Doesn't matter if the healthcare was amazing & the patient is healed & healthy now...it all depends on the hospital survey rating. So in turn, our focus is more on making the patient happy than healthy. Ugh!

I'm telling you...it's just a matter of time before hospitals are including spa like services....manicures, pedicures, hairstyling...just to increase patient satisfaction scores. This is what "healthcare" is turning into.

What a joke!

2 comments:

Cartoon Characters said...

that is sad. I am glad that we haven't come to that in Canada....yet. You won't find any fancy schmancy hospitals up here....and the patients that come in are actually "patients"......

Carlene Noggle said...

Thank the Lord for GOOD nurses like you that still CARE about their patients anyway. Some of us pray and thank God for nurses like you. Well at least I do.
love ya,
carlene