xhac (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} xhac) wrote,@ 2007-11-01 16:55:00 |
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Mass General
I just finished setting up wireless at mass general. I swear there are dozen SSIDs around here... Turns out it's "phspiaguest". I've been here for the last four days (but I just gotten my laptop) and the differences with the greek hospitals are already screaming at me.
I just finished setting up wireless at mass general. I swear there are dozen SSIDs around here... Turns out it's "phspiaguest". I've been here for the last four days (but I just gotten my laptop) and the differences with the greek hospitals are already screaming at me.
Here's a bullet list. I'm trying not to focus on too much technology stuff, like how much better was the MRI (even the fact that there was NO MRI machine in a freaking cancer hospital) or the CT scanner, or even the excellent intercom between patient and nurse.
- Hospital food was absolutely _crap_ in Greece. I mean they had some three main core foods (chicken, lousy steak, awful burger) and three sides (pasta, rice, mashed potatoes) and all of a sudden they have nine menus they replay over and over. I used to eat that for a month or two and never touched it since. Here at MGH they have a menu selection that takes my sister 30 minutes to check (you see I select what I want for the day and my sister checks for "mistakes" [wacko]). Not everything is great, or even good, but they have specials every day and it could be many days before you have the same dinner twice.
- There is no cotton lying around. Back in Greece everywhere you looked you saw this artificial cotton made of plastic net which they used for everything. Want to get some blood? Poor some alcohol on the cotton, rub, puncture, tape cotton to hand. Want to sterilize something. Poor betadine in cotton, rub, done; can also use twice or more. There is none of that here. Everything comes in tear-away containers (think restaurant wet paper mini-towels). There are special ones with simple pieces of alcoholi-dipped paper to sticks pre-dipped in betadine. A nurse can come in and tear size or seven such bags in a session.
- Everything is faster. From scheduling CT-scans (hours vs days) to taking blood from my special port (7m vs 1m) to taking my temperature (3m vs 5s) everything is done faster here.
- Nurse shifts are 12h in MGH vs 4 or 8hr in Greece.
- In MGH policy is king. No EKG without your bracelet ID (no such thing in Greece) and birth date verification. Nurse comes, lifts bed (15s), realizes she forgot a paper, lowers bed, returns in (15s), lifts bed, etc just in case I have to go to the bathroom real quick.
- Nurses are 100% prettier here.
- The IV in MGH goes through a computer that controls flow, warns you for flow problems and tells you when you're done. If only I had that all those time when the IV had stopped all night and had to switch veins, which was extremely difficult for my scrawny hands.
- In MGH the patient is treated better than the doctor. In Greece, when doctors come by, everybody is so reverent and pulling their chins up, like going undergoing inspection, especially nurses. When a top doctor (clinic head) visited, everybody but the patients had to vacate rooms in advance. Not so over here. I don't actually blame doctors personally (though they are partly responsible for that obviously). The other part of the blame hangs with how _people_ see doctors. I mean a doctor walks in a room filled with visiting family in Greece and they are all over them like something terribly dramatic happened during the night that only that particular doctor can explain.
- When you have to have a blood transfusion in Greece you have to ask your relatives to come give almost as much as you are to take. I must have had 25+ platelets transfusions during my stay in Greece. Taking platelets from a person is a one hour process and only mornings on weekdays. And you can do it about once per 20 days. Oh, and not everyone can "donate" (over 55, high blood psi, being "anxious", etc). Do you know how deep in your family tree do you have to dig to come up with that number? In all probability I'm having some platelets here tomorrow, no questions asked (though I guess that'll be in by bill). That's what you get when you can give blood for money. Oh, no. That's immoral so it must be illegal. Make the sick man beg for blood instead.
- This is a (very big) pet peeve for me. Whenever a doctor came by in Greece, we had a 3 minute conversation for an update and then the doctor stepped out and had a 10 minute talk with my family. I was completely out of the loop the whole way. I learned about the tumor a week late (I'm pretty sure some doctor was actually lying at my face at some point) and I had late or no notice about every important (bad) fact about my health. Turns out it was my mother that somehow forced that policy (also there is a thing called "afternoon appointments", where you pay 40e or so and see you doctor for 15m, which encourages the doctor to say less during visits and enabled more scheming in my case). I was so freaking mad I told the nurses to forbid them from checking out my test results, which wasn't really practical and I retracted, in exchange of complete disclosure. 10m later they were at it again. I don't think there's one person in the wing that didn't hear me shouting that day. Anyway, I'm not sure about the legality of all this but I feel I'm getting the real story in here (partly because my mother doesn't speak any English).
- In MGH the doctors may be the experts but they sure make you think that _you_ are in charge. I'm not sure how much of this is watching out for lawsuits but they always ask, "how about this" and "do you agree with that" and stuff. Not a great practical difference but a nice psychological one.
- Something slightly related to the above. My roomie here at MGH is having one of the same chemo I had in Greece. One thing you should look out after you take it, is not let you PH be acidic or it could form salts in your liver and other places. They test the PH every couple of hours when you pee (and believe me, you pee a lot, or take a pill that makes you go every 15m). If your PH is suspiciously low they had me drink _baking soda with water_. Sure they had medicine for that (which the gave me some times) but baking soda was "better", I guess "more natural". Now chemo thing also brings you nausea you wouldn't believe. I (apparently unlike any other person) HATE drinking baking soda and when I told everyone that I'll throw up if I drink this, I got a "don't be such a baby" look from the freaking nurses. It doesn't help that the surrounding family members were "naturalist" freaks. The fucking nurse put me in all that hell (I might have to drink that stuff 5 times in a day, actually threw up twice), I'm still ungry about it. I fucking begged them to give the other stuff. Fuckers. My roomie here just takes his pills and when I told me about the baking soda he was looking at me like I was in Rwanda or something
- I was supposed to be in a highly monitored wing at the Greek hospital when I was having my bone marrow transplant. One vising person per room, wearing mask, special shoes and all that, because my white counts would be very low for a long time. Despite all that, every day I had a couple of persons come in "just like that", leave a freaking commercial pamphlet on my bedstand (advertising wheelchairs and stuff) and walk away. Or they would be selling little icons of famous saints and stuff. Now, when they were selling stuff at least you could shout them out with a fulfilling righteous monologue that you had down to perfection and put the fear of god in them (not that they wouldn't come back. But the other guys, the ones with the pamphlets, they were so quick they were out before you know it which left you simply frustrated. Every week there was something reported stolen from some room in our floor. I would expect that a salesman or a thief would be as likely to come in my room at MGH as a beggar at a fancy restaurant.
- I just downloaded a trailer at 17mbit/s. In Greece the tech guys were nice enough to setup an access point for me and have me share their 1mbit/s leased line which had any decent speed only when doctors left in the evening.
- When I had to do an CT scan in Greece I had to drink to spoonfuls of a bitter "contast" fluid in two glasses of water. Here in MGH I had to drink 2 780ml vanilla shakes with the bitter stuff. Just give me the damn water man... Who can drink 1.5lts of goo.
