SECRETS IN MEDICINE
by Wendy Wilson
If you asked people what they thought was the best kept secret in medicine you'd get many different answers. One person thought it was the allergy testing done by dermatologists because everyone is allergic to something. Personally I think it is a bigger picture that is kept from view. If I had to water it down I would say it is the message programmed to the public that scientific medicine knows just about everything and if they can't help you no one can. When in fact it is the opposite and for that reason we have drug companies that are heavily protected by politicians. Let's take a peek at what secrets you may not know about within the halls of medicine.
HOSPITAL IMAGE
The image of a hospital is very important. No one suspects a hospital smelling of antiseptic would actually harbor contagious and deadly diseases on door handles, clipboards and tongue compressors. No one suspects that a hospital with sophisticated hospital equipment would be a place for misdiagnosis. No one suspects that doctors and nurses make huge medical mistakes and covers them up. No one wants to think that malpractice insurance and hospital liability insurance is high because there is real risk of loss of life. No one wants to think that hospital authorities are run by accountants only worried about profits and will cut costs wherever to achieve cost-saving goals.
REMEMBER THIS
- Hospital staff may not have washed their hands. Physicians and nurses touch patients, clipboards, and equipment and can be all highly contaminated. A study review by Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology reported 60% of the time hospital staff do not follow protocols and wash their hands. Physicians were found to be less likely to wash their hands compared to nursing staff. One doctor can infect 20 patients in one day.
- The hospital white coats that the staff wears are not washed that often.
- Hospital cleaning staff is not always efficient in disinfecting hospital rooms, baths and equipment.
- Hospital policy is not written in stone especially when protocols were ignored and someone was injured. Unaccountability is normal. Hospitals lie to patients.
- Hospital records are not secure, are an open-book and often disappear. There is no real patient privacy; it is policy only but not enforced. Often hospitals will give patients being admitted "hospital disclosure consent forms" supposedly listing the ways your health information will be shared (a.k.a. escape hospital jurisdiction). Most hospitals do not have policy to notify patients of a records breach and if their information stolen.
- Hospital charts are often unsupervised and sensitive health information could get into the wrong hands (private investigator, employer, identity thieves, and former spouse).
- Identity thieves could be hospital employees and patients need to put a 90-day fraud alert on their bank accounts and credit cards upon admission.
- Information hospitals glean from patients will filter down to insurance companies, life insurance companies, pharmacists and drug store employees, third-party billing and electronic health record providers.
- Physicians and nurses make drug mistakes often; wrong dose or wrong drug. Medication errors kill people and computers have delete buttons.
- Just because hospitals have incident reports and risk management departments is often window dressing that looks good to customers.
- Not all anesthesiologists in surgery are medical doctors running the gas. In most cases CRNA's are doing it, which are nurses. There could be eight or more surgeries going with just one anesthesiologist on the floor for emergency only. Patients are charged as if the medical doctor was present administering the gas.
- Hospital staff often ignores equipment alarms and patient buzzers. Some hospitals outsource this monitoring and life expectancy jumped 49%.
- Does your hospital have a rapid response team? If they do a physician, nurse, respiratory therapist and pharmacists should make up the team and arrive at patient's bedside when called.
- Did you know that each patient shares their nurse with a minimum of 12 other patients? Nurses carry the labor-part of patient care and not all nurses are registered (RN's). Some are nurse assistants who have often graduated from the sanitation staff. Passing the nurses' assistant test is not difficult but many struggle needing more than three attempts.
- When there are budget cuts in the nursing staff, RN's will have many more patients to look after or they are the first to go leaving patients with nurse assistants. Hospital policy goes out the window when it comes to budget cuts.
- A study by Medical Care reported that you are 14% less likely to die when treated at a "Magnet Hospital."
- Hospital food is anything but healthy especially to someone with diabetes, heart disease or cancer. In reality hospital food is what you'd expect to see at a sporting event. Patients are fed hot dogs, burgers, chicken wings and lasagna according to the Physician Committee for Responsible Medicine. In the US only 443 hospitals specialize in healthy food that is antibiotic and hormone-free.
- ER wait times have grown by 25% since 2008, which are associated with more hospital admissions and deaths.
- Hospitals normally reduce the number of staff members working on weekends and this contributes to higher complications and mortality rates. This puts 55 million at risk of higher mortality.
- Most cancer patients do not know that 1 in 20 diagnoses made by primary care physicians are wrong. That is about 5% of the time and affects 12 million patients.
"Hospitals hide serious mistakes from patients 98% of the time."
Dr. John Makary Surgeon John Hopkins University Study
"Not all doctors in white coats are licensed practitioners and are interns. Interns are future physicians in training. They are not allowed to make decisions on care and may not inform patients of all the procedure risks. Always check ID badges." James Merlino Chief Officer Cleveland Clinic
The University of Michigan at Flint did a study in 2012 where the average time for hospital staff to respond to a patient call button was 18 minutes.
"There are consequences that go beyond long wait times for pain medication with staff cuts. Understaffed floors account for 2% increase in patient death." New England Journal of Medicine
"The number of sick patients doesn't go down on Saturday or Sunday, but the number of health care workers does. On weekends, you wind up with on-call workers and less experienced staff." Dr. Armand Leon
"When doctors are rushed or put on autopilot mode, they skip critical thinking and make a diagnosis based on probability alone." Dr. Armand Leon
MAGNET HOSPITAL
We hear the term "magnet hospital" and that they are supposed to be a better facility when comparing hospitals but what does it mean? The term magnet hospital was given by nurses who rank hospitals according to quality of care. Since the bulk of patient care lands on the nurses the American Nurses Credentialing Center that is affiliated with the American Nurses Association rank hospitals according to their criteria measuring the strength and quality of nursing care. It also measures the working environment or the moral of the staff.
THERE IS A LOT
There is a lot to consider when dealing with hospital authorities. There are legal entanglements and patients with health problems should fully investigate all the factors when looking to modern medicine for treatments. They should look beyond co-pays and insurance payments and think about a living will for instance. They should think about what could go wrong and what family members will need to do. After working for a major hospital I can tell you that they are ruthless when it comes to payment and will not bat an eye foreclosing on an elderly women's home after they just performed open heart surgery on her. Remember, hospital documents have patients sign forms that puts the patient on the hook should the insurance company not pay and insurance companies are notorious for stalling and not paying. The flip side of the coin is that hospitals and doctor's offices will over treat patients with good health insurance. Health care is a business after all and money answers all things.
PREVENTION MEASURES
Now more than ever it is essential that we strengthen our bodies to be more resistant to disease and functional distress. There is another type of insurance and it is called pro-activeness. When we do run into issues we should consider all the options available to us. We should ask, do we really need an antibiotic or do we need nutritional sources that support the immune system? Do we need radiation, chemotherapy or surgery to correct a problem or is there another way? The Internet has made researching options easier and finding the solutions that fit. Working in the medical profession I realized that patients put up with medical results that are less than expected because they don't know they have other options. Loss of function equals loss of quality of life.
THE HERBAL WAY
When I discovered the power herbs contained I was blown away. After all, I worked in the healthcare industry and thought like most people that there was nothing else. Boy was I wrong! I decided to discover what health secrets herbs contained and I found that they unlock the door to strengthening the body whereas modern medicine manages symptoms and allows a weakening to develop. Let me give you an analogy;
Your septic system is backing up and you are told that tree roots have crept into some of the pipe joints and you need to repair the system. Instead you decide to pour root killer down the toilet every night in an attempt to kill the roots. This may work temporarily but eventually the roots will multiply and break the system.
Countless times I have heard from people who wished they had not had surgery or some other medical treatment and had been proactive at the first sign of trouble. Don't let symptoms go unchecked because like the roots they will be harder to deal with later. Likewise, I've seen herbs reverse some serious conditions because the body is designed to regenerate and heal. When we learn to work with our body and not against it and stop doing what made us sick, you see some remarkable results. This is why I often say you have more power than you think. Most internal medical problems are due to diet and a lack of nutrition. If we cleanse the system of impurities, put organic nutrition in the body and boost the immune system we are quite successful helping the body restore itself. For more information or to order your Organ Cleansing herbs and immune boosters call Apothecary Herbs 866-229-3663, International 704-885-0277 www.thepowerherbs.com, where your healthcare options just became endless. Free product catalog.
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