Two examples of what's wrong with our health care system today: (Besides insurance)

[hedgehog]

Ex. 1: 60 year old bachelor, living alone, has major heart surgery - pace maker and defibrillator installed. Two years later, when he catches a cold virus, he becomes deathly ill because he has no one to take care of him.

Ex. 2: Healthy young female has about 6 sonograms taken during her first pregnancy. Despite investing in a breast pump, she takes the baby home on formula because she doesn't know how to nurse.

The problem in each case: plenty of money for high tech interventions, not enough money to hire people to do simple nursing care. He needed a visiting nurse; she needed an experienced nurse to assist her through several feedings. Now, despite all the money invested in heart surgery , he is very frail. Now, her baby is getting formula instead of breast milk.

[supernova]

1. Yes, we're looking to save $$ in all the wrong places

and scrimping on nursing care is one of the chief offending practices.

Not only that, they boot you out of the hospital way too early. That woman with the new baby? In the old days, she and baby would have stayed there until they could nurse properly.

If you have surgery, you are booted out of the recovery room for home before you are properly healed and sent home with complicated wound care and pain mgmt instructions.

All of this because hospitals scrimp on nurses.

edit: Oh, and if you have any problems "go to the ER."

[hedgehog]

4. Don't get me started on the standard 48 hours and you're out

following childbirth. I have six kids, and my status after giving birth was all over the place, sometimes I was exhausted and sometimes bursting with energy.

[classykaren]

9. 24 hr and out in fla

I know I am old but I remember in the fifties one week for natural chidbirth

[Lydia Leftcoast]

15. I heard of women in Oregon getting kicked out of the hospital TWELVE hours

after giving birth.

[hedgehog]

19. Sometimes the clock starts at 8AM the day of admission, even if

the patient shows up at 11PM!


Sometiems 12 hours may be enough time, who knows? The problem is that the doctor and patient should decide, not the insurance company with a one-size-fits-all standard!

[postulater]

2. Dont get me started on back surgeries!

[Missy M]

3. Lots of money is made on the high tech devices.....

not much made with Visiting Nurses. The cost of the Pacemaker/Defib is approximately $40,000.00 plus the ridiculous cost to insert them.

[NC_Nurse]

5. There aren't enough of us either.

Where's the money to increase funding for nursing schools? Promising students have to wait for YEARS to get into the ADN
programs in many areas because they are so underfunded and understaffed. I have considered becoming a nursing instructor, but
it doesn't pay enough. Very frustrating, IMO.

[hedgehog]

6. People still don't understand that nursing involves more than

following the orders of a physician!

[NC_Nurse]

7. Yes, it's amazing to me.

Most doctors have no idea how to do many treatments and work a lot of the equipment - that's what the nurses
do. They don't give chemotherapy, recover the patient from anesthesia, change most dressings, start the IV's, take care of the lines
and perform the tests. They certainly won't be the ones who are there to save you in the middle of the night if things go downhill.
Strange how the old stereotypes persist, isn't it? We're just doctor's handmaidens in a lot of people's minds.

[K Gardner]

13. Doesn't it just kill you to watch these TV shows where the docs are at the

bedside drawing blood, consoling families, holding hands, putting in IVs, etc. etc. I mean, really, LOL. The scope of nursing practice in this country is such that in European nations, we would be considered and paid as PAs. (don't get me started on THAT rant :-)

[NC_Nurse]

14. Yep. House comes to mind. I've never seen docs do ANY of that stuff.

Sigh.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

16. Yes, it's the nurses who learn all that day-to-day stuff, not the doctors

A lot of doctors wouldn't know what to do if they had to do the minute-by-minute patient care that nurses do.

[msongs]

8. gee maybe the woman could have asked a female friend/family member?

http://www.babycenter.com/0_pumping-your-breast-milk-an-overview_8791.bc

deosn't exactly sound like rocket science.

Msongs

[classykaren]

10. LaLeche

Its a shame she didnt know about it they would have given her all the help and support she needed in breastfeeding and its free

[LWolf]

12. I had a hard time getting my first child to nurse.

He just didn't "latch on" correctly. It was a week of constantly "leaking" milk into his mouth, and feeding every hour, before a visit with his pediatrician taught me how to help him. His grandmothers and aunts didn't breastfeed.

The second child had no problem, except that he was so "vigorous" that I needed help keeping him from damaging tender skin so that I could feed him without pain. Again, it took awhile to accomplish.

I wish I'd had some instruction for both issues before I took my babies home!

[knitter4democracy]

17. It's not instinct, it's learned.

Babies instinctually suck, but that doesn't mean they do it right. It's the mama's job to get them in the right position and make sure things are going well.

That, and the first six weeks hurt like hell. My first had an amazingly strong suck, and it was like a knife every time she latched (every half hour or so for ages). The pain went away at six weeks, but I only kept at it with the help of a lactation consultant and my doctor and my family. Well, that, and a high pain tolerance. My second baby's suck was so much less that I worried that something was wrong with him. The lactation consultant helped me figure out that he was fine. That, and how to make sure both could drink easily and not choke on a strong let-down and what supplements to take to ease gas.

It's not exactly easy.

[hedgehog]

21. If mamma and all the aunts and friends all bottle fed their babies,

it can be hard to nurse a baby. Everyone around you wants to stick a bottle in the kid's mouth.

[luckyleftyme2]

11. 50 years ago

We didn't have that problem,the dr. came to your house (they called it house calls)
but 50 years ago they didn't have stints,they didn't do by passes,cancer was rare
because it wasn't diagnosis very often. and the avg male lived to be late fifties.
polio,t.b. and god knows what else was yet to be conquered.
so if you take all things into consideration maybe those new fangle things are worth having.
Of course I may be a little bias,as i've had heart surgery that wasn't done in the fifties.
the cost is exorbitant because prices have been jacked out of site. in 1950 a dr. in
my town who had practiced for 30 years made $10,000 a year my dad worked in a paper mill about 15 years and made $5,000. THE dr. made house calls in a black caddy (1950)
the dr. had an office in his house,and their were two hospitals in town both owned by drs. they were basically huge houses.
a paper maker today would make $50,000 a year doing the same job my dad was doing in 1950. my local dr. makes about $350,000 a year. and the dr. no longer does operation because of the high cost of insurance. and most of them now drive Volvo's,or
4 wheel drive suv's in winter. and they don't make house calls very often.
Insurance companies drive up the costs of medicine,medical practice insurance and the only way you can manage it is to eliminate profit in health insurance.
we pay more for health care than any other nation yet we get the least for the dollar.
the insurance companies cry poverty yet their profit margin is large. even the shuttle of paper can't hide it.
Its time we elected officials that demand lower prices with better coverage or do what the public wants and make it one payer 100% coverage for every american citizen
a canadian making $43,000 a year pays $900 per year max for a family plan.
and before you repeat what the insurance companies have fed you. read about their health care coverage. its rated quicker more advanced ,better and less waiting time than we have for a hospital bed.
ya its the insurance companies and over charge,top heavy administrators etc.

[knitter4democracy]

18. Hubby makes $160K, drives a Taurus, covers two hospitals, and does house calls.

He saves the house calls for the really sick ones who can't make it in, but he does them. Heck, he admitted a patient last week to the hospital from his office's parking lot--her husband came in and got him, and he ran out to their car, checked her over, and ran back in to call the ER that she was coming and to put in a couple of orders to tide her over until he could get there at lunchtime.

Oh, and he hates insurance companies with a passion. He fights them all the time to get the right care for his patients, and he hates them. He wants a national health care system.

[hedgehog]

20. What would be great is if doctors started practicing with nurses.

The nurses should be the ones making house calls on a lot of well eldrerly patients.

[knitter4democracy]

22. The NPs and PAs do that sometimes at his new office.

If someone's homebound, they send out a mid-level provider. If they need the doctor, he goes out, too.

[sicksicksick_N_tired]

23. Ex. 3: there is no reliable means to make a living.

A family is destroyed.