Healthcare is Crushing Patients and Docs
And nurses and medics and all the rest...
I was talking to a fellow emergency medicine physician yesterday. We discussed how we don’t like to see anything violent or stressful on television these days. When we go home we want escape. We feel that we’ve seen enough bad things at work.
This all leads me to wonder just how broken many of my colleagues are; how sad, stressed, frightened but how dangerously stoic.
This is especially true as hospitals in general and ERs in particular get busier, the patients get sicker and the resources become more and more strained. If you’ve been to an ER, or with a loved one, you’ve seen it.
Chaos and long waits. This takes a toll, not only on patients but on those treating them.
I doubt if most administrators understand just how wounded their staff members actually are. I mean “soul-crushing, thousand-yard stare, I want to do something else but can’t afford it” desperate.
I’m not even sure we realize it ourselves…
I wrote this to my colleagues one year ago. Things just aren’t getting better:
I don’t say this to be depressing but so that everyone involved understands that they aren’t alone.
I am certainly more anger and frustration among patients and ER docs (and staff), more elderly and chronically ill patients who do not have adequate access to a primary care physician, longer waiting times for acute care, referrals and follow-up visits, recurring shortages of certain drugs and IV fluids, fewer kids getting vaccinations and/or boosters, Etc., etc. Ironically, here in Albuquerque there are no shortages of guns on the street, homeless folks needing care (often brought in by police for mental health issues), and, unfortunately, an abundance of malpractice lawyers. I am old enough to retire, but on most days, I still love my job and the team that I work with.
"Dangerously Stoic", no truer words