It seems to me that as the local health networks continue to expand their footprint as they naturally do with growth, that accountability for their actions often seems to be forgotten. It is often replaced with the platitudes similar to “I’m not sure why that happened to you” as opposed to actually investigating a situation to determine where the system failed and preventing it from happening again.

Here is just one such example that is still an ongoing saga to which I devoted about 40 minutes on the phone again today trying to get to the bottom of it and was basically told that while it made no sense that these things happened, there’s nothing they can do to prevent it in the future. This is entirely unacceptable and as patients or more bluntly as consumers, we deserve better. It’s time we find a way to work together and open the lines of communication between providers and patients to increase accountability and awareness of issues when they arise, as they often will, because no health system or business, for that matter, are perfect or infallible.

So today I come home from my second overnight sleep study in three weeks with more questions than answers. To say I am frustrated, confused, and even a bit defeated would all be accurate. This may seem confusing when you read why below, but I promise to make sense of it. It’s important to keep in mind that medicine is rarely simple and especially for those of us with multiple or complex medical conditions it gets increasingly complicated.

Professionalism goes a very long way in patient relationships. Even if you don’t feel compassion, sympathy or empathy for your patients the fact that healthcare is a business and good business requires good customer service, I strongly suggest you learn how to at least fake it and fake it well. Openly doodling and blatantly leaving it for your patient to find does not instill a sense of professionalism a provider should hope for.

Time is a finite thing when it comes to our lives regardless of whether we are healthy or ill. None of us know how long we will have on this planet before our time is up. This is a fact. Also a fact is that while many of us do not wish to talk about it we really need to be having the difficult discussions with our family about what we )and they) may desire should either become unable to make or communicate decisions regarding their medical care on their own.

Zebras #AtoZChallenge

There is nothing more frustrating as a patient than having a provider look at you and summarily discount your symptoms as ‘impossible’. It is very common that we are hesitant, even afraid, of that which we do not understand. It is also true that those trained to diagnose and treat us could and should be held to a higher standard.

It is to them we look when our body revolts against us in ways which we do not understand. It is them to whom we turn when we feel our body couldn’t possibly be destroying itself as it seems to be doing. It is our physicians we look to for an answer of that which we cannot make sense of on our own. And that is how it should be for they are the ones with years and years of education and experience upon which to base their examination and diagnosis.