Are YOU terrified to be a patient (and your loved ones too!)

1 Believe me, I HATE to be so negative, but lately, the ERRORS and LAZINESS I see where I work just make me TERRIFIED to
be a patient, and of course, for my loved ones, too! The other night, I was sooo upset over sooo many errors I saw at work, I
told my husband "if you're hospitalized for a broken FINGERNAIL, I would still be there with you, 24-7!!!"


I am just overwhelmed!!!!! Also, noticed one particular secretary of ours ALWAYS forgets to write the allergies on all the
doctors' order sheets. Yes, of course the doctor and pharmacist should always CHECK, but they STILL need to be on
EVERY order sheet, and written in RED! When I had surgery years ago, I had to tell them to write PENICILLIN all over
my chart.....it was not noted ANYWHERE on my chart (nor did I have the bracelet!!!!)......scary, scary stuff!


Oh, and that reminds me, even our wonderful pharmacists seem to be making more mistakes lately. It is just terrifying.
BUT, just so ya know I'm not completely anxious or overwhelmed, I also have strong FAITH.....so, I keep telling myself,
if my loved one or myself has something go wrong due to someone's gross negligence or just pure LAZINESS (UGH!!),
I'll just pray that God will give me/ us peace about it, and He'll decide what's going to happen......
i just caught myself saying this the other day. won't go into detail, but yes i agree.

Oh for HEAVENS sake what is with the MELODRAMATIC capitalisations? I'd trust my own hospital with my nearest and dearest but some of the others I've worked at...forgeddaboutit.

!@#$, yes ...

I'm sorry so many people work in such sub-par facilities.I would trust my hospital any day to care for myself or my loved ones.

I worry, but I also have a fear of pain. I can watch surgery and needles going into people, but I can't watch a needle go into my own arm. I have heard stories about the pharmacy sending down completely off meds. and the nurse happens to catch it because she noticed it looked different. I keep telling myself I am going to learn what each med looks like lol. My nephew received the wrong meds one time, and my sister (a mortgage manager-not in healthcare) caught the mistake. A friend's dad had the wrong leg amputated. I also had doctors tell me to abort my son because there were problems, and there weren't..he's a normal little toddler. The more you know about a job, the more "real" it seems, and you learn how easy it is for things to go wrong. Like when I worked at an amusement park...I won't be riding wooden rollercoasters anytime soon. Yikes.

Nope. When I have been ill I put trust in my hospital and coworkers. I have had 2 minor surgeries done there (during one I got a lecture from the AA telling me to quit smoking... "you are one of us and we care about you.") Are there nurses on my unit I would prefer not to care for me... sure, but it's mainly due to personality issues rather than incompetent care. I'm actually pretty nervous that I need to have a procedure outside of my home.

We were just talking about this the other night at work. We said nurses can be the worse patients because we know what happens . If I'm ever hospitalized I will probably never try to use my call bell unless it's important, and I will never ask my nurse for ice cream and as soon as she gets back, ask her for something else. That's soooo annoying. I would however report when something was wrong and "fire" a nurse in a heartbeat if I didn't feel safe with them. I would try not to intimidate the nurse with my medical knowledge, I don't know if I'd even let it be known I was a nurse unless I needed too. (ex: to get their tails in gear) . It is scary. It's also sad that a lot of it, or at least at my hospital stems from being overworked or heavy pt loads. Then, on a easy day, people seem to think it's a vacation.

I am the mandated hospital advocate for my entire extended familiy. No way would I allow family members to be admitted without a "lookout" at their side.

NONE of my family will be in the hospital without me there!!!!! They thought I was a nutcase when I was complaining about the nurse with acrylic fingernails with tons of jewelry everywhere and chewing gum... Until my family member ended up with abscesses & sepsis! Oh and I love the nurse who argued with me about whether or not he should get Zosyn when he has a Penicillin allergy! She ran the whole freaking bag and then the order was changed the next shift. Syringes being dropped on the floor & I have to tell the nurse to go back, wash her hands and disinfect the syringe.... Piggybacks being hung lower than the maintenance fluid (she had to clamp the maintenance fluid to get it to run LOLOL!!!!!) But I didn't notice until the blood started running up the saline lock because it had run out *RIPS HAIR OUT* all this and I was only a 2nd quarter nursing student at the time! I wonder what I didn't notice! Maybe I have just a *little* PTSD....

Interesting comments- do the people who feel family/themselves unsafe at their facility feel that it might be due to staffing/stress? Are the people who feel comfortable as a pt staffed approriately, not stressed out?

I can't say the staffing was out of control. I had rotations at this hospital on this floor. The staffing was 4:1. We had a ton of resource team nurses... perhaps they were overwhelmed because they were unfamiliar with the floor? He had 2 hospitalizations. The second was for over a month. We had some absolutely stellar nurses too. It was a wonderful facility.

I am comfortable with the idea of my son being a patient at either the peds hospital where I used to work, or on the peds floor of the HMO hospital that our current insurance covers (and where I did both my adult med/surg and peds rotations when in nursing school). However, if he's ever hospitalized anywhere, no matter how much I trust the facility, I would still try to be at his bedside as much as possible. I know that nurses can't be everywhere, and I would want to be able to alert them immediately if there was any kind of problem -- and yes, I would be watching all staff like a hawk any time they came into the room (but hopefully not in a way that would totally drive them nuts!).I would also be comfortable being a patient myself at the same HMO hospital, but again I would ask lots of questions and want to know exactly what meds or treatments I was getting when, and why (but that's how I was even before I went to nursing school). If I wasn't A&O enough to follow it myself, ideally I would want another family member there -- not due to lack of trust, but knowledge that nurses can't be everywhere.