When patients are admitted to hospital for elective surgery or non-urgent conditions, their vital signs are only monitored every four hours, unless they have been identified as being at high risk of deterioration.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Constant attention by a good nurse may be just as important as a major operation by a surgeon.
Patients know in a heartbeat if they're getting a clumsy exam.
Ever tried to get sleep in a hospital? Ever wonder if anyone even taught them what care is? Some hospitals are great, but some sure aren't.
Too often, hospital staff are incented by management to get work done without worrying about care, and clinicians are too often not even trained to think about care.
The best doctors and the best hospitals in America, if they cannot get the patient information they need when they need it, it can lead to morbid consequences: Higher mortality.
Of all the surgeries I've had, there's not much left to operate on. I am totally bionic.
Hospitals are places that you have to stay in for a long time, even if you are a visitor. Time doesn't seem to pass in the same way in hospitals as it does in other places. Time seems to almost not exist in the same way as it does in other places.
My sense is that the wonderful technology that we have to visualize the inside of the body often leaves physicians feeling that the exam is a waste of time and so they may shortchange the ritual.
Present law has a process to ascertain whether or not a patient is in a persistent vegetative state, and it should not matter what politicians think.
I use a portable pocket ultrasound device instead of a stethoscope to listen to the heart, and I share it with the patient in real time. 'Look at your valve, look at your heart-muscle strength.' So they're looking at it with me. Normally a patient is tested by an ultrasonographer who is not allowed to tell them anything.