Tips On How To Remain Safe In A Hospital

Florence Adunbi, 35, had seen two doctors about the stabbing pain in her stomach. But when it worsened, she visited the emergency ward of her local hospital. After lying on the hospital floor in pain for hours, Florence was given a CAT scan to see her organs which showed nothing unusual. So the emergency staff gave her a prescription of more painkillers and told to go home. After two days, Florence visited two more doctors when the pain continued. This time, one of the doctors referred her to a surgeon, who recommended exploratory surgery. The second doctor, after questioning Florence extensively requested for her CAT scan. A look at the film confirmed Florence had an advanced diverticulitis, a serious infection of her digestive tract. To complicate matters, her bloodstream was brimming with the ensuing bacteria. The doctor was amazed at her sickness and said her colon was in danger of bursting. The doctor placed Florence on antibiotics for 2 months. While Florence was lucky not to suffer any long term health problems from the ‘nothing is wrong with you’ diagnosis of the hospital emergency, she was angry for being made to go through needless agony for a long time.  Her trust in hospital was broken and her experience made her cautious of hospitals.

Shortage of experienced nurses

More than ever, medical slip-ups, mistakes, and poor judgment have turned safe hospitals into possibly dangerous ones. Just take a look at these facts:

If as many as 100,000 people die each year in U.S. hospitals from medical mistakes, a country with the best doctors, medical equipment and drugs; the situation in Africa is much worse. Africa's brilliant doctors have fled to greener pastures, hospitals are bare with hardly any scanning equipment, talk less of the latest modern equipment, and medication is in short supply.  In  a case where you get needed medication, it costs an arm and a leg; that is if you are lucky to get unadulterated medication. In view of this grisly scenario, death rate in hospitals from miscalculation and guesswork is likely to be tripled in Africa.

The stark reality is that millions of people pick up infections in hospitals each year largely due to avoidable mistakes and hundreds of thousands die from them. While the first thing is to stack the blame on hospital staff’s  incompetence, inexperience, or discourtesy, experts say the problem is simply 21st century health care. It’s normal and safe to assume that every person who works in a hospital is there to assist. Unfortunately they quite frequently end up making the situation worse.

The increasing rate of casualties is making more visits to the hospitals inevitable, while lower compensations by ministries of health and other healthcare institutes, is leading hospitals and clinics to cut staff and do with less. The result is an overworked and slightly trained workers and a defective system of checks and balances. The hardest hit has been the nursing profession. The general public must know the impact the nurse has on their safety.  For instance, it’s the nurse who administers medication and ensures only sterilised devices are used. Simply put, fewer nurses mean more mistakes. Although nurses are trying to meet the needs of the patients, they're stressed, angry, and frustrated because they know they’re short staffed. To worsen the scenario, experienced nurses flee to greener pastures with lucrative offers as soon as the opportunity arises.  For the nurses that are left, they are overworked and underpaid, resulting in short tempers, aggravation, and ‘get the job done quickly-if not properly’ attitude.

Growing medication mistakes

Ndidi cut her index finger with a meat slicer which she treated at home. Unfortunately the meat slicer had released bacteria into the wound, and in two days swollen to twice its normal size and excruciatingly painful.  Ndidi visited a hospital for treatment. The attending doctor looked at her swollen finger and quickly ordered an intravenous antibiotic drip. The doctor warned if the wound didn’t improve fast enough, he would have to slice open the finger to release some of the infection.  Ndidi got four or five bags of the antibiotic solution before a nurse changed the IV. For the 30 minutes it took the new bag to drain, it felt as if cold water was flowing down her arm and across her chest. She pressed the nurse call button many times, but no response until the shift changed. The nurses seemed overworked and fatigued. Ndidi asked why the difference in temperature between the IVs. At her persistence, the new nurse examined her files and found that her predecessor had mistakenly given saline instead of the crucial antibiotic. Ndidi resumed antibiotics, the infection cleared, and she returned home within 2 days.

The most common type of medical mistake is a medication mistake; which is split into 13 various kinds of slip-ups, including vague or unreadable prescriptions, right medications given to the wrong patient, and mix-ups of similarly named medications, much of the problem traced to the shortage of nurses. A study found that the risk of making a mistake increased when hospital nurses worked more than 12 hours per shift, worked overtime, or worked more than 40 hours per week. This emphasises the fact that, though you have the best people who are sometimes at their worst, you still cannot expect 100% performance of them every time they go to work.

Some doctors don’t wash hands sufficiently

Pat Solomon, 40 had a small biopsy on her leg and the resulting incision was just 1-inch long and sutured with seven stitches. However, Pat noticed that when she got home from the hospital, the wound looked really red and oozed pretty badly. She quickly called the hospital and was told not to worry, that the redness was not unusual. There was no difference the following day. With the infection worsening, Pat became worried and visited another hospital. The doctor examined the leg and was shocked to see a ghastly wound. The doctor said if the stitches had remained much longer, the infection would have been serious. Antibiotics cleared the infection within a week, but the wound remained painful for nearly four months and still pulsates now and again.

Infections acquired from hospitals are worrying. The most common are urinary tract infection, pneumonia, surgical infection, and the best way to protect patients against bacterial infections is hand-washing. Scrubbing just 20 to 30 seconds with soap and water, or rubbing with an alcohol-based gel, assists health-care workers beat most germs. Yet hand-washing compliance by doctors in hospitals hovers around 60%, majorly due to busy workloads and a heavy patient rotation, according to a report in medicine. Health-care workers know they should be doing it but they’re not very good at practicing it.

Tips on how to remain safe in a hospital

So after all the loopholes in hospital safety, how can your safety be ensured whether it’s for an hour or two or a four days stay in the hospital.  Your safe care is not just the responsibility of doctors, nurses, and ambulance drivers, but yours too as you can help manage how good you're treated. These safety steps will guide you:

Before you go, check it out. Talk to friends, relatives, associates, doctors - do a sort of quality check, to find out if your hospital meets the guidelines set by a Medical Association or whatever group that establish criteria for ‘standard’.  Also find out about the rate of medication mistakes and infections picked up from hospitals.

Pick a supporter. When you’re in the hospital, your ability to make key decisions that can affect your health may be compromised particularly when the case is an emergency. Make up your mind on time who will go along with you on your visit. Pick someone who isn’t afraid to ask difficult questions, and have a good knowledge of your rights.

 

Ask for the doctor in charge. While doctors’ assistants are good for stitches and sprains, you need a qualified and experienced doctor, if it’s something more severe. Once you have seen the duty nurse, ask to see the doctor in charge.

Be fanatical about cleanliness. Make sure your doctor put on a new pair of gloves when he or she comes to inspect you. And if gloves are not needed, as when checking your pulse, ask if hands have been washed. Also be aware of your surroundings, for instance spotless floor, wall, toilets, cabinets, and beds.

Take a breather from herbal remedies. If going for surgery, herbal remedies such as Ginkgo, ginseng, St. John's wort, and valerian are a few of the many supplements known to cause surgical problems like slow wound healing, medication interactions, lower blood pressure, and an increase of bleeding. Drinking lots of water helps prevent infections.

Get moving. If you're recovering from surgery, get out of bed and move around as soon as you have the doctor’s go ahead. Lying still in bed for long hours allow mucus to gather in your lungs resulting in your lungs inability to expand fully, risking pneumonia.

The above tips are meant to increase your awareness of your vulnerability to many hospitals’ infections, so you can avoid needless casualty. Take for instance this weird story about a woman who went into a hospital with one broken leg, but came out with her two legs in plaster. An intern doctor treated her.  It’s your right to ask questions, demand for cleanliness, and if the situation dictates you see the top doctor, ask. It’s your life, anyway.

Photo Credit: Creative Commons.