Excerpt from: “The Truth About Healthcare, Uncensored:
Everything you need to know to get good care while in the hospital!"
Introduction
A humorous, but honest look inside the world of nursing. It's a shout-out for nurses already in the profession as well as insight for those who are looking to make a career out of nursing. It also gives doctors a raw glimpse into nursing. Lastly, but definitely not "leastly," it is a guidebook to help patients and their family members understand what is expected of them as the patient. It also helps them to understand what they should expect from the healthcare professionals taking care of them. We want to provide you with the essential tools for receiving the best nursing care possible, hence having the best experience possible.
We’ve all heard the horror stories about bad hospital experiences from patients, their family members, even hospital staff themselves. And lets face it; sometimes there is nothing you can do to keep these things from happening. I've been a Registered nurse for many years and just experienced what it's really like to be a patient for the first time two years ago. For the biggest part of my career, not including the inexperience, I felt that I was a very good nurse. I went above and beyond, not all the time, but most of the time. I'd do all the little extra things to make the patient feel special while using excellent clinical nursing and assessment skills. I enjoyed learning new things and learning first hand from the physicians and the more experienced nurses.
So imagine my dismay when I received the worst nursing care imaginable. I do believe in Karma, so I thought my hospital stay would be as heavenly as a hospital stay could be. I guess there was a lesson for me to learn, rather than a reward to receive. But to tell the truth, all it did initially was speed up the rate of burnout for me. I was out of work for six weeks and when I returned, I couldn't imagine that I was here... in this place... taking care of other people when I had been so badly neglected myself . I carried around a lot of baggage related to that experience for a long time. I would often cry when I thought about it or when I tried talked about it. Go figure! Here I was acting like one of those poor-me type people that you see on the talk shows. You know, the ones that make you want to say, “ OH, GET A LIFE ALREADY AND GET OVER IT!!!!”