Unfortunately, it so happened that we spent Christmas with the little one in the hospital. For the faint of heart, I would like to point out right away that in the end everything turned out well. But this unplanned survival (because it cannot be called otherwise) showed me a lot. A lot of absurdities that govern the health service, misunderstanding of the needs of young patients and their parents, but most of all, he showed me what the parent-doctor relationship looks like, in which, unfortunately, the former is still a petitioner for the latter, not a partner.
Clash number one . We arrived at the hospital in an ambulance on the signal. So we got into it as we stood. Eventually an emergency. We land in the emergency room of the pediatric ward, the doctor accepts each child undress for examination. A moment later it turns out that there is not a single Pampers on the ward. At the pediatric ward – just to remind you. Before the mow takes me a set of necessary things, it will be a while. So I stand there with the baby in my arms waiting for him to pee on me. And squirting for sure. After all, I have nothing to change for myself.
Clash number two. Venflon. Putting a cannula on a one-and-a-half-year-old child is a massacre. Of course, in response to my request that the baby be in my arms, I get a great misunderstanding in my eyes and a firm “no”. It is not known why the nurse says that the child lying on the couch will be calmer than on the mother’s arms. Fails. After piercing the hand, the nurse fails to collect the blood. So it stabs in another place again.
Clash number three. We go to the room, the baby to the crib, with a drip and CTG attached. It is 23.00. I sit down in a chair and wait for him to fall asleep. Then I look around. There is one more, so far empty, crib in the room. There is a chair next to each cot. In the corner, on the stand, there is a baby bathtub with a tap above it. And that’s it. It’s December, so it’s the middle of winter. There is a cloakroom in the ward, but the nurse does not recommend leaving jackets there 🙂 So the jackets end up in the room. In that one chair. And the parent is sleeping on the floor. If he brings himself a sleeping mat and a sleeping bag. Because if not, she is sleeping on the chair. It is midnight, the visits are long over. Where should I get the sleeping mat?
War of the Worlds
I can understand all the arguments related to bureaucracy, lack of money, overload of patients in wards, and busy staff. Seriously. I’m not expecting much. But how is a parent to function with a sick child, who is supposed to be on the ward for 24 hours and has nowhere to lie down? I spent 4 days there. And I was exhausted. What about parents whose children spend weeks or even months in hospital? Is a reclining armchair a cost that cannot be missed? After all, there is a finite number of neonatal departments and those where patients are small children.
A parent in the ward is not treated as a partner, someone with whom doctors and staff can and should cooperate, but as an intruder and an obstacle. All nurses in the ward wear clogs. Not in quiet sneakers, so as not to disturb the room with sleeping babies and exhausted parents at night, but in clogs. And they come in every hour or two. So every now and then a child wakes up, cries every now and then, and the parents are unable to sleep a wink.
The doctor who comes to the ward only says “please undress the child”, which he then examines in silence, as if the parent were not there. You ask what and how and without eye contact you get the answer that you will find out at the end of the visit, and the information is provided by the head physician in these and these hours. In his office. The head physician accepts without children. WITHOUT CHILDREN, do you get it? You are in the ward with an infant and you have to leave the child alone in the crib to stand in the line to the head of the ward and get in to find out about his condition. And not! Dad, grandmother, aunt cannot look after the baby at this time. Because only one person can stay in the ward. SIC!
But my greatest amazement was the food. “The hospital is for treatment, not for feeding,” I heard. After being admitted to the ward, the doctor was unable to understand that my baby was no longer drinking milk from the bottle. Because a mixture is being prepared for the children. A dedicated person, called pompously dietitian, brings acc. ordering milk bottles, which are heated in a microwave (!). For toddlers, only tea is served to drink. Black, sweetened. And so the teeth creak. Menu? When I saw them, I thought that my eyes would come out of their sockets. For children aged 1-3 years: breakfast – a slice of white bread with butter, Krakowska sausage, cheese or jam, depending on the day. Lunch: sour rye soup (seriously), pasta with strawberry-yoghurt sauce (sweetened of course), chicken leg with rice. Dinner: like breakfast. For this sweetened tea. Any vegetables are missing. Seriously.
And don’t let anyone tell me that groats are more expensive than rice, or that you can’t make broth for the price of sour soup. And yes. This is a menu for children from the age of one to three, prepared by a dietitian. For the parent, of course, there’s nothing….
