HIGH TECH HOSPITAL SHORTCOMINGS

SHORTCOMINGS OF A MODERN HOSPITAL

Hospitals do fancy tests to show their clinical capability rather than their concerns for your well-being.  A hospital today is no place for anyone seriously ill.  Basic sanitation is compromised; pathogens run rampant through the hospital, carried by uniforms worn out on the streets.  MRI and cat scans are used promiscuously, tranquilizers are given like water to keep you the patient from complaining, and hospital routine schedules take precedence over your sleep requirements. 

Little attention is payed to the science of nutrients.  Each meal has processed foods as the norm, with poorly balanced meals, white bread with all its chemical softeners, bleached flour, preservatives, harmful dyes and overcooked vegetables deprived of their nutrients.

Specialists are called to agree on a precise diagnosis.  You don’t have to accept their verdict if they say you have an incurable illness.  Acceptance of this causes depression, panic and fear.

DEATH IS NOT THE ULTIMATE TRAGEDY OF LIFE

The trend is to mandatory hospitalize seriously ill patients. The ultimate tragedy of one’s remaining time on earth is depersonalization not death.  One shouldn’t die in an alien and sterile area, separated from spiritual nourishment, separated from family and all the things that made life worth living. 

We try to battle cancer with all our technology and chemotherapy at our command.  Seldom do we have the courage to ask important questions.  Are we justified in treating a terminal cancer victim with radiation and chemotherapy that produces all sorts of complications so we could add a few months to a patient’s life?  Is it perhaps better for that patient to use every precious moment of that time in bonding with one’s family?  Do doctors have the obligation to fight disease with every weapon they have even if it will take a heavy toll on the quality of the patient’s life?

The super intensive care unit with its technological innovative electronic monitoring equipment provides everything diagnostically necessary in an emergency.  But it has built in drawbacks.  It lacks the sense of security and ease that the body needs and creates a tendency to panic.  Emergencies become intensified as imminent disasters to the patient.  Above all, it dramatizes the absence of warm contact between the doctor and his patient.

HIGH TECH MEDICINE

Medical care is increasingly more mechanized and the doctor’s attentiveness is disappearing.  Our high tech medicine is pushing your doctor away from you.  No longer are there house calls or out of the office functions.  They are too time consuming.  The skills of today’s doctors are not out of a little black bag, but by computers and exotic electronic diagnostic equipment.

Machinery is interposed between your doctor and you. The powerful healing influences of the doctor are forfeited to a machine.  Doctors must touch people.  Doctors are so busy lying on of tools that the laying on of hands and listening are long gone.

Some doctors think that technology wills some day abolish all disease.  Not every illness can be overcome.  But you cant let the illness make you cave in and ruin your life.  You are still in the poker game and more cards are coming.  Keep the game of life going.  As long as you feel helpless, you will seek the sanctuary that illness provides.

Doctors forget that these MRI’s, Pet scans, and Cat scans can be intimidating to you.  A battery of tests are ordered even if there is no clear need for them.  When hospitals and insurances placed the doctor on a fee schedule, he could only justify his livelihood by doing something.  This shut down the patient contact.  A computer and surgical procedures now appraise him.  High tech tests are in a premium position on the fee scale.

 

The last thing you need is another strange experience or strange face.  All this takes time, and time is the one thing you need most from your doctor.  Time to be heard and to get things explained and to become reassured. 

Doctors have trouble managing time.  They favor the new tests because they don’t have time enough to get information from you that will give them the diagnoses.  There is no dollar return for the time spent getting a detailed history and physical exam.  And above all, there is no need to make you know what was done, why it was done, and what course of health program he plans for you.

Patients want continuity of personnel human contact, warm smiles, outstretched helping hands, and an atmosphere of compassion.  We see hospitals as offering fractioned care, discontinuity, and full of surprises.  People and tests come and go, and you must make your adjustments as best you can, alone.

Does your hospital inspire confidence that you are in the right place?  Do you trust those who seek to heal you?  Above all, do you expect good things to happen?

What do you think?

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