I think the last two postings on Patient Modesty: Volume 48 set the problem of the current medical system followed by a explanation of why the problem is present. Both and together I think, are worthy preface to begin Patient Modesty: Volume 49. ..Maurice.
From Anonymous:
As a woman, I've appalled with the way the general medical profession handles (or doesn't handle) patient modesty, and their seeming obsession with having access to the genital area. In the past I have been denied everything from allergy tests to antibiotics for ear infections due to my refusal to submit to a PAP smear. So be it, I now turn to alternative medicine for what I can, and suffer through the rest.
My 60-year-old husband never quite understood my views since he'd only gone for random physicals and never experienced anything untoward. However, he rcently underwent an outpatient surgery to have an ICD device placed in his shoulder, and now he understands.
He was required to check in to the hospital 2 hours before his scheduled surgery time. A nurse came in and gave him a gown and told him to remove everything including his underwear. She wrote something on a chart and repeated "Now don't forget your underwear." Then she adjusted the bed and a third time said "Remember to take off your underwear." I could tell she was making him very uncomfortable with her repeated focus on his underwear, so I firmly told her to Back Off. I told her he was neither deaf nor mentally impared so I was certain that he understood her directions, and I asked her to leave. She left, but he was visibly shaking as he got changed. And then we sat there in that room for 2 hours, with literally nothing else happening beside a nurse coming in 1 time to take his blood pressure (which was higher than usual). Finally nerves got the better of him, and he slipped his pants back on so he could walk around the room a bit. Like she had radar, a nurse came in shortly after and berated him for not having all his clothes off. So he took off his pants again and laid in the bed for 2 more hours while nothing happened.
Finally a man came in to take him down to the pre-op room. My husband was allowed to go to the bathroom before being wheeled downstairs. And as he asked me, WHY did they insist on him being nude under a butt-revealing short gown for all that time? Could he not have just been told to change when he went to the bathroom? It seemed like nothing more than a tactic to upset him and make him submissive.
Once in the staging area, a nurse cleaned the shoulder area, inserted an antibiotic IV, and jokingly told him not to go anywhere. The she flipped up his sheet a little and joked "Not that you're dressed to make an escape anyway, right?" before she left the room. Wow, what a way to humiliate a frightened man and emphasize his vulnerability. My husband went a little nutters at that point, asking me to remove his IV and bring him his clothes so he could leave. I had to beg him to go ahead with the potentially lifesaving procedure.
Afterwards he was supposed to stay in recovery for an hour (where I wasnt allowed to be)before being returned to his room, but it didn't work out that way. I don't know what happened in recovery, but he came walking up to me in his gown and asked for his clothes. I gave them to him, he changed in a bathroom, and we left.
Now he says that when the battery on the ICD wears out, he won't go back to have it replaced. He says the thing can just "Sit in his chest doing nothing" because it "isn't worth it" to have to go through all that.
Nornally my husband is the apitome of a rational thinker, so obviously their techniques really upset him. I'm sure he wouldn't have made such a rash end decision if they hadn't insisted on making him lay around for 4 hours feeling humiliated with those 2 nurses making an issue of it, when there was no need for it. And they wonder why people don't go in for needed tests and procedures? What's wrong with our medical society?
And from BJTNT:
The unfortunate element of the PCC syndrome is that the employees can practive it with impunity. There is no management to crack down on them. The MO administrators are only concerned with implementing the medical committees and ownership policies. The supervisors are promoted employees with the PCC mindset. And MDs only want to "see patients". So, the kids get to run the candy store.
On the other hand, as POGO stated in the Walt Kelley cartoon of the same name "We have found the enemy and he is us." We expect [and I think rightly so] high standards from medical operations{MO} because our health and even our life can be at stake. But, to the MO employees it's just a job. It's just a job with some nice perks {PCC}.
BJT
Graphic: From Google Images and modified by me with Artrage and Picasa3.
NOTICE: AS OF TODAY AUGUST 15, 2012 "PATIENT MODESTY: VOLUME 49" WILL BE CLOSED FOR FURTHER COMMENTS. YOU CAN CONTINUE POSTING COMMENTS ON VOLUME 50
