I moderated a teleclass for family caregivers this afternoon. One of the attendees who cares for her husband expressed frustration about incidences that occurred during her husband’s recent hospitalization.
“They called me at 10 p.m. Monday night,” the family caregiver said, “to tell me he was agitated and I needed to hire a caregiver to sit with him. Who in the world could I find at 10 at night?”
“I know,” another family caregiver said. “I just stay with my husband when he’s hospitalized.”
A hospitalized caree is akin to a traumatized caree. Hospitalizations cause confusion, anxiety, discomfort. Many times, the worst place for a caree is a hospital. Most times, it’s the only place that has what your caree needs to be better.
Horror stories of hospitalizations aren’t new—family caregivers have been telling me about the difficulties they experience in hospitals for the past 20 years. Chances are you have more than your share to share. I’m perplexed, though, why hospitals can’t make adjustments to better care for older patients.
Hospital administrators have aging relatives, too. Surely, they’ve experienced what you’ve experienced. If they haven’t, I would think the fear of experiencing what you experience would be the catalyst for change.
So, why, I wonder, can’t hospitals do better?
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We have experienced these frustrations as well. I was asked, after my mother had knee surgery, to have someone sit with her 24/7 because she was having an adverse reaction to the anaethesia. This morning I spoke with my mother’s geriatric psychiatrist/pharmacologist back home. I keep in touch with her quarterly, with one face to face visit annually, so that she can be involved with my mother’s care and medicine choices. I had asked a doctor here about the Exelon Patch vs. Aricept for my mother’s dementia. The doctor quickly dismissed the idea and said there were no other options to help with her dementia- word find, and other frustrations that come with it. In talking with our doctor back home she explained that the Patch works on 2 brain receptors vs. the Aricept which works on only 1. She also explained she could remain on her Namenda. The Patch may not show significant change, but probably some, and it should slow down the dementia, which is what we want to do, to keep her as independent as she can be. So…..initially I was upset at the doctor here, but then quickly realized it seems as though it’s the specialists that we need to seek out for specific questions. It seems we now live in a world of specialists. I think with the hospital: we have had some good experiences too along with some really bad ones. Should we be frustrated at the hospital or at the people that we happen to connect with during the stay? Are the hospitals better when you are in a larger city? I know that has been a question that has come up for me lately where we live. I am glad that the people we provide care for have us as caregivers to speak up for them, and look beyond the information that we are given, especially if we are not comfortable with it.