common courtesy in medicine

by Carolyn Thomas ♥ @HeartSisters

Not since I was a teenager having my wisdom teeth surgically removed with the aid of that luscious nitrous oxide laughing gas have I floated home from a dental appointment feeling so exhilarated. Because yesterday, I took a personal stand against rudeness and disrespect in the delivery of my own health care.

Regular readers here will already know how surviving a heart attack (plus, I suspect, my advancing progress towards Cranky Old Lady Land) have made me increasingly ticked off by health care providers who:

treat us as if we are simply a piece of meat on a slab – and worse, an invisible piece of meat on a slab
forget that we are far more than just the 10 o’clock procedure in their daytimers
disregard the fact that there is an actual real live human being attached to the body part they happen to be working on

My recent mission in life seems to be to put the brakes on this kind of pervasively rude behaviour, one health care provider at a time. Continue reading “Would it kill you to treat your patients with respect?” →

hospital

by Carolyn Thomas ♥ @HeartSisters

Dear hospital employees,

After a particularly bizarre experience undergoing a treadmill stress echocardiogram at your hospital recently, I decided to do something that I have never done before. I called the Cardiology Department manager to complain about her staff. (Incidentally, a recent opinion survey of international travellers found that Canadians were #1 in only one category: “Least likely to complain when things go wrong” – so you can appreciate that lodging an official complaint is a fairly Big Deal here!)

In my best PR fashion, I told the manager how distressing the appointment had been for me because of the behaviour of the two cardiac technicians in the room. Continue reading “An open letter to all hospital staff” →