Anika’s Thoughts of the Week 5

Many thoughts about how I was treated by different people in the ward this last visit.  And actually the experience was much better than the last one.  

I find that often you have one of two attitudes towards your depth of knowledge of yourself.  They either believe you are knowledgeable about yourself or they don’t.  And if they don’t, it can be quite daunting - or at least I find it so.

But on my last day at the hospital, I was chatting to the trainee nurse and she believed me and the fact that my blood pressure is USUALLY low and she told me that makes the oxygen stats slightly lower and therefore not an issue.

Well, nobody has ever even suggested this to me, and I said to her that some people believe me and others don’t but this had never been mentioned.  And I was glad she DID.  

I said to her that you see many nursing students in year 3 lose their ability to believe patients.  And she told me that now they were teaching about what they called patient experts and the necessity to listen to them and LEARN from what they say.

TREASURE

The fact that some medical staff DO believe you because you DO know what you are talking about with your body if you have been in and out of hospitals a lot and learned how to control your own condition.  And that it is now beginning to be taught in nursing school.