Patients hear and see everything

 The other day I was called in to see patients in the extraction department as they were running quite far behind schedule. There was one lady who had been waiting about 7 hours since 8am for her extraction. She was a walk in who had presented to ED the day before (a public holiday) with a facial swelling. She was complaining to me that she was very tired as that day she was waiting 14 hours total in the hospital ED. I wanted to say something about how she was waiting less with us than them but then decided it was best not to. 

As our time together progressed, she told me more about her ordeal and how she was sitting around while nothing happened, people were walking around, talking and having coffees. She said she waited 3 hours for a CT scan (for the dental pain) which was in a room 5 meters away and when she went in there was nobody waiting. She said she asked staff when her CT scan was going to be and they kept replying they didn't know. She asked if they could check with a doctor and they replied "uhh i guess so". She said that when she went into the CT room the nurse asked where the CT machine was and the technician there told her to open her eyes as the machine was right there. She said the staff must have been new or trainees. 

Eventually I turned her around that appointment and she went from a grumpy old lady to a cheerful, happy lady. All I really did was spend some time with her, ask her about her life and take a tooth out for her. My point of repeating what she said in this medium isn't a criticism of hospital EDs. It is to highlight that patients are people too (something we can forget when they are not right in front of us). Patients have needs and emotions and will jump to conclusions based on the slightest information especially when they are frustrated, tired and worried. Patients hear and see everything around them and we cannot control how they process this information.

In this case, she didn't see what was happening behind the scenes, she didn't know how long the doctors and nurses had been working in that department, away from their families on a public holiday. She didn't see if they had a heavy workload, or other patients they were in charge of outside the waiting room. She didn't know that the people she asked for a progress report were actually in charge of other areas and weren't directly involved in her care. And she didn't see if the CT room was busy before she got there. Perhaps she wouldn't be so upset if she hadn't been waiting for so long or maybe she would have been. But the point is that the way we present ourselves, how we interact with our colleagues and the information we give to our patients is vital to pay close attention to. A few seconds taken to explain to her the situation, the expected waiting time and the plan to go from here would have sated the patient's curiosity and reigned in her wandering mind. When patients ask for a progress report, they aren't being difficulty, they are expressing their frustration at their powerlessness and seek guidance to remove the unknowns.

Reflecting on my time with this lady was a lesson to me to pay closer attention in how I act and how my behaviour and the behaviour of those around me affects people's perception of our organisation as a whole.