This is regarding your June 15th entry on Gratitude. We just brought my father home from the hospital on thursday. He has a terminal illness and when he got home I truely thought we only had weeks left with him. He was incredibly weak and utterly exhausted. I am a nurse in the hospital my father was treated at and I was surprised at the condition in which we brought him home. After two days of uninterrupted sleep and home cooked meals, he has perked up and is now walking around and taking care of his own needs once again. Of course his heart condition was treated, but he seemed in worse shape coming home than when he went in.

As a nurse I know what happens behind the scenes that cause patients to find their treatment in hospitals subpar. First, we don't allow enough sleep. Some of that is of course having to share rooms. However, we also have policies and procedures which make uninterrupted sleep in a hospital impossible. Examples: Many patients have their last does of medications at 11p.m. Between 3-5 a.m. blood work on almost all patients is completed so that doctors have results at 7 a.m.. Medications are started for the next day between 4-5 a.m. as are vital signs.

I use to work nights and if a patient was lucky (pt has no roommate, last medication at 9p.m., bloodwork at 3a.m.) a patient might get 6 hours of uninterrupted sleep. But that was rare. And who can fall asleep at 9 p.m. when we are still running around making noise in the hallways. When you go to your doctor's office with an illness, he'll say get plenty of rest. Here we are in a hospital and not providing our patients with what they need most, REST!!! (emphasis added)

Now I can understand having to poke around at all hours of the night for critical patients. These patients can go bad in a minute and need constant monitoring. However, the majority of patients are not critical and the best thing we can do for them is allow them to rest. Many nurses over the past several decades have tried to change policy in hospitals to allow for more rest, but the motto in hospitals tends to be "this is the way we've always done it".

Another issue that affects care is paperwork. A rediculous amount of paperwork is required for everything we do. Most of the paperwork is for legal documentation in case of lawsuit. When a patient wins a multimillion dollar lawsuit against a hospital anywhere in the country, we suddenly have a new policy and another piece of paperwork to fill out. In many ways our hospitals are like our govenment; inefficient, wasteful, and full of red tape.

Of course there numerous issues in our hosptitals which affect care, the above two are just small examples. Some strides have been made especially in terms of patient safety. We have an excellent computerized medication administation system which has reduced medication errors immensly and I'm always surprised when I find a hospital that has not instituted this new system. It's a no brainer!! I am hoping that advances in computer technology in hosptials will help us create a better patient environment. But we also need executives who can think outside of the traditional hospital box and get creative about patient care. My goal in life is to run a hopsital one day and hopefully allow for better treatment. I know it will be quite a battle!!!