Foreign Country

I was walking down the hallway in the hospital today on my way to clinic. As I passed by several empty rooms with their beds made and ready for their new occupants, I thought about what it must be like for a new patient coming into the hospital. I don't mean a patient with any sort of medical background or even a patient with a friend or relative with medical background; I'm talking about any patient off the street with little to no medical knowledge other than what his or her family doctor has told him or her. I imagined how overwhelming it would be. Forget the ED right now, the patient is brought to their new cubicle of a room that probably overlooks the wall of the adjacent building. They are swooped in upon by a couple people in scrubs that they assume are nurses. These people strip them bare, attach multiple cords to them that then make all sorts of loud beeping noises, they get stuck with needles that are then attached to more tubing. Another machine is squawking at them now. Then, when all this is done, the nurses leave. Just leave, and the patient is now alone in this tiny room, attached to multiple machines, with only a TV for company. At some point, the patient is descended upon by an army of people in white coats, the doctors, and are told a bunch of things that sound really scary. Are these things explained? Probably not. Does the patient ask for enlightenment? No. Why? Because he or she doesn't want the doctors to think he or she is ignorant or stupid. 

It was disheartening for me to think about how I walk into the hospital each day of my own free will. How I have some semblance of an idea of how everything is connected together. I understand the language to some degree. I just can't imagine the fear the average hospital visitor would have on entering. It's like a foreign country minus the tour guide/interpreter. Except, I would think it's worse because at least in a foreign country, you can ask the mundane questions without feeling completely humiliated. But in the hospital, there's a level of humiliation in the process. The patients know the doctors are speaking the same language thus making it all the more difficult for them to say simply, "I don't understand" or "please explain". The way we tell our patients what is wrong with them is in an air of superiority, again, making it difficult to allow the patient the security to pipe up when he or she is lost in the jargon. The constant sense of urgency, of lack of time, of rush makes the patient feel even more compelled to remain quiet. The "well, I just don't want to make my doctor angry by making them more late with my stupid questions" takes over. Sometimes I wish we could be more patient with the patients.