Ford: Alberta's health system is ailing, despite best efforts of staff

“When I’m in charge, they will have to experience this.” The speaker is a student nurse. “They” are members of the Alberta government.

I am the patient. The setting is a Calgary hospital. If I believed the situation was different in other hospitals I would name it.



Given the moaning and complaining going on, there is not much chance I’m wrong in believing the treatment I received wasn’t substantially different than anyone else’s. What the earnest student was saying was a commiseration with the elderly woman — me — complaining about an uncomfortable bed, a cold room, blankets that don’t live up to the name (except when they came directly from a warming closet), the sheer noise — the intercom directly behind my right ear — and the various tubes and stuff attaching me to the bed. And she’s right: every member of government should anonymously experience this before making any decision to rearrange everything but what really matters.

Let’s give a hospital stay a dose of reality: There is no dignity, peace, quiet, privacy or modesty when one is under the control of the health system. It was a four-bed ward: I know the symptoms, ailments, medical history, problems, treatments and difficulties of the others, just as they know my intimate details. One leaves privacy and dignity at the door; indeed, there should be a sign over every hospital: Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here.

(With apologies to Dante.) That’s unfair, but what this boils down to is the shocking inefficiency and waste in the heart of the system, not the staff. Indeed, the nurses and aides could not have been nicer, although a few were maybe a little too cloying.

(I blame that too-sweet voice on the habit of dealing with the aging as if we were “cute,” like small children.) Maybe it’s just me, but I doubt it. I spent too much time correcting the abysmal habit of being referred to as “dear” by the staff.

It isn’t as if our first names were not printed in bold letters right above our beds. And on that note, I spent an equal amount of time telling various doctors if they were going to introduce themselves as Dr. So-and-So and call me Catherine, they had a choice: they could call me Ms.

Ford or, should they insist on addressing me by my first name, I needed to know theirs. Luckily, only one nose was put out of joint. Which brings us to the reality of hospital arrangements: they are not for the convenience of the patient but the convenience of the system.

That certainly accounts for the 5:15 a.m. wake-up call to take blood.

If doctor rounds begin early in the morning, the lab must deliver results before then..