Update and Perspective on Hospitals

Mom's home, and I have a new appreciation for good health insurance. She's needed a bit of care, and a visiting nurse is dropping by every other day or so to check the incision and assess Mom's progress. So far so good. Really, what do the elderly do without close relatives or decent insurance to ensure a standard of care?

And I have to say that I'm seeing a marked difference in care between either 1) the hospitalized elderly and hospitalized children, or 2)between small community hospitals and major medical centers. I'm not sure where the difference lies, but (and I hope I don't get flamed for this) it seems to me that the nurses are younger and sharper and quicker in the major hospitals. In all DD18's twelve hospitalizations, I almost always felt the medical staff was on their game. Not so at the smaller community hospitals, where my parents tend to go. Or perhaps the difference was that I never left DD18's side. I was her advocate and I felt I was on watch for medical errors. This was partly because of several well-publicized incidents in the last few years at various medical meccas around here...I questioned everything (politely) and felt part of the "team," which was encouraged at her hospital.

It feels differently at the smaller hospitals. Maybe around here they suffer from an inferiority complex, which I can understand. I really do try to be respectful, but I get impatient with vagueness and the constant paperwork (some of this stuff should be computerized, if only to minimize medication errors).

And maybe I'm biased (OK, I definitely am) because DD18 had symptoms that, while not exactly misdiagnosed, were dismissed or minimized by this small hospital six years ago. (I still remember the triage nurse insisting DD18 might have a urinary tract infection while she sat clutching her head in pain.)

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DS16 ended up with strep throat, so now he's on antibiotics and feels much better. I think this bug went through the other two in a milder form earlier this month. At least, it never occurred to me to get them checked for strep. Regardless, they are fine now, and before antibiotics, strep frequently ran its course (with some casualties, I'm sure).