Word: patient
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Doctors and laymen alike were shocked and outraged at an anonymous letter in the January 8th issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. In the letter, a resident physician wrote in, describing how he had been summoned to the bedside of a 20-year-old patient named Debbie, who was dying of ovarian cancer...
Officially, of course, the shortage has not really endangered people's lives. "Often the level of T.L.C. that a patient expects -- the back rub, the hand holding -- doesn't get done in today's intense environment," says Allan Anderson, president of Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan. "But I don't think there is any evidence that the quality of hospital care has deteriorated...
...same time, advances in medical technology have dramatically increased nurses' responsibilities. Consider the neurological intensive-care unit of Chicago's Cook County Hospital. Cocooned in a bewildering array of intravenous lines, tubes and machines, each patient is desperately ill; 30 nurses are required to monitor and care properly for a group of nine patients around the clock. "Things can change rapidly," explains Mary O'Flaherty, the unit's nurse coordinator. "One moment a patient's intracranial pressures, blood pressure and cerebral-profusion pressure can be fine. The next moment you can start hearing bells...
...define the professional nature of nurses more precisely and assign other people to positions where a nurse's professional and scientific background is not essential," says Dr. David Skinner, president of New York Hospital. It does not take a nursing degree, for example, to deliver a pill to a patient. Houston's M.D. Anderson Hospital sometimes uses medication technicians, not R.N.s, to dispense drugs to patients after nurses have verified the dose. Says Connie Curran, vice president for health-care management and patient services at the American Hospital Association (AHA) in Chicago: "Hospitals that are using registered nurses to answer...
Naturally, such a revamped job description means more responsibility -- and more respect. Nurses are often the first to spot trouble, make sense of a patient's confusing symptoms or suggest a needed change in treatment. Yet acting on such observations has traditionally been the physician's purview. R.N.s must become full-fledged members of the team and be expected to engage ! in the medical give-and-take about patients' well-being. That role is never in doubt on the AIDS ward at Sherman Oaks Community Hospital, where doctors and nurses find themselves depending on one another to battle the deadly...