By Tiffany Lai August 16, 2023
In spring of 2023 I gave birth to my first child. It was a beautiful experience but also harrowing as I had a very dangerous form of preclampsia and needed an emergent induction. I was at risk of organ damage, seizures and hemorrhage.
Working at the hospital, you would think I would be comfortable being admitted as I knew the general ebb and flow, knew some medical terminology and medicines, walked a similar hallway 5 days a week.
Completely different. TOTALLY different.
There was a hospital prisoner study where they found wearing a hospital gown psychologically made healthcare providers view people as prisoners and themselves as guards. This study is going off of the Stanford prison study where play acting guard and prisoners with volunteers for one week led to actual physical and mental abuse. That definitely came to mind in my own experience. Despite working in the medical field, I wore a gown, not a uniform. I was a prisoner.
Even when I told the nurse I could do a scoot back transfer to a commode to have a BM, he declined me and gave me a bedpan, which I had to squat over like I was in the woods… in front of my husband. It was humiliating. But I know how it is, likely he didn’t know where a commode was and couldn’t be bothered. But bedpans are restocked everyday in the utility closet.
I think knowing some medical knowledge was actually worse. It allowed me to advocate for myself but also scared me. When I experienced blurred vision in my right eye, I started to self diagnose with my neuro training. I took my blood pressure and it was elevated. I was scared. I totally bypassed my nurse who took forever to answer the call light, and went to the charge nurse.
My vision cleared about half an hour later when the doctor came to visit and it appeared people didn’t really believe me and chalked it up to a possible anxiety attack. How do I know? Because social work came to visit me the next day. Again, another reason knowing the ebb and flow of the hospital can actually make your experience worse.
When I requested to be sent home with some blood pressure medications, I was denied. They discharged me and I was readmitted 2 days later for persistent hypertension and had to stay another 3 days.
It was all in all a bit of a traumatic experience for me. I had one or two nightmares about it, but luckily that’s all it took for it to get processed and resolved.
This experience changed the way I practice in the hospital. There is definitely something to be said of a healthcare worker that has experience being a patient or experienced having a love one be a patient in their setting. It changes the way you look at your patients in front of you. They’re not just patients, they’re human beings. I’m able to see myself lying there in that same hospital bed, having the worse time of my life. It makes me think, how can I make this person feel a bit better?