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A minor suggestion to reduce patient's pain

Posted By: Lawrence Emke meta_seperate Date Posted: August 16th, 2010 meta_seperate Category:

My wife is in the hospital. She is having pain (Diciest?).
She had received some pain medicine, which allowed her to sleep.
The new “rounds” doctor came in; woke her up; and performed
the interview procedure. The procedure was professional, and
I assume it provided sufficient information.

My minor suggestion, concerns the doctor’s room exit process.

While my wife was asleep, she was not complaining of pain.
But the doctor just left the room with my wife in pain.

I would hope that the doctor would be more considerate.
Clearly my wife exhibited the signs of continuous pain.

A principle to consider:
“When you leave, the situation should be in as good a
state as when you entered.:

I know the doctor does not have the time to wait until
my wife is back to sleep. I realize the doctor is an
important person, and has a busy schedule to complete.
My daughter-in-law is a physician. I would want her
to be this considerate (unless she is being paged to
another emergency).

After the doctor left, we pushed the button to ask the
nurse to bring some more pain medicine. It took 10 minutes
to contact her and another 15 minutes before the drug took
affect. At 30 minutes she was back to where she had been
before the doctor entered. I think this response time could
be shortened.

Maybe the doctor did not have sufficient time to understand
the “current” situation. The situation might have been improved
if the doctor was aware, or talked to someone who had more
information about the situation. Part of the delay was
caused by the nurse having to find the doctor, to get permission
to give the additional pain medicine.

Thirty minutes is not a long time to suffer. This really is not
a big deal in the grand scheme of things. But I thought it might
be a little thing that could improve the care currently being
given.

Thanks for the opportunity to express my thoughts.
This web site is a good thing. I don’t know how helpful
it will be in improving things. However, I am optimistic
(because it exists) that things are headed in the right
direction.

Larry Emke


1 Comment


Comment By: Kris Hall meta_seperate Date & Time: August 16, 2010 at 11:20 am

Lawrence,

Thank you for sharing you and your wife's experience on this forum. We appreciate hearing about situations such as these, as it helps us to understand how our processes and procedures are working for our patients.

We continually work towards providing the very best in patient care. Please be assured that your comments will be referenced in our ongoing pursuit of process improvement.

Warmly,

Kristin