I
work as an NP in a private hospital. It is one of the best medical centers in
the city, where no case of medical negligence has ever been found. However, the one thing I dislike about this hospital is
that new patients are asked to stand in long queues and to pay admission fees
before they could be directed to
respective departments for treatment (Crisp, 2018).
The previous month, I was doing night
duty when I saw an old woman bringing her
son to the hospital. He was lying on a stretcher and looked too serious to me.
Instead of helping the old woman bring his son to the emergency department, a
nurse forced the lady to pay the admission fee. She asked her to stand in the
queue of females, and it took the old woman up to three hours to pay the
admission fee and to bring his subconscious son to the doctor for treatment
purposes.
From this incident, I learned that paying the admission fee is not as compulsory as
saving the life of an ill. It was good if
the doctor had started the treatment, and in the meanwhile, the old lady had
made the payment. It was a clear case of medical negligence, and that nurse who
pushed the old woman to the reception for making the payment should be punished. The patient was crying while his
hopeless and helpless mother was standing in the queue, and it is regrettable
that no one from the staff came forward to help them.
Although I
love working in this hospital, I would
like to request the management to not deal with patients and their families
this way. Hundreds to thousands of people lose their lives due to negligence
like this (Mcloughlin, 2017).
I had seen tears in the eyes of that old
woman, but it was not possible for me to
help her as I was myself checking a patient in the emergency department while peeping
through the window what was going on in the reception area. This incident left a bad impact on me,
and I will request the hospital
management to stop causing problems for patients and their worried family
members on the name of the admission fee.
If Iwere
on the place of that nurse, then I would
have helped the old woman make the payment. Her legs were shivering, and there
were visible signs of sorrow on her face. The nurse could have brought the
patient to the emergency department while requesting his mother to pay the fee
rather than shouting at her and pushing her back and forth.
I
think that while working in the hospital, it is my
responsibility to provide care to patients and to be there to answer the
questions of their relatives. The job of a nurse is not easy; it is full of
challenges, and at the same time, the nurse should learn to stay calm and must
cooperate with everyone around her (Kraus, 2016). The behavior of that nurse
did not look professional to me. At a
glimpse, it seemed that she was crazy for money and had lost her senses.
References
Crisp, L. N. (2018). Nursing
Now - Why Nurses and Midwives Will be
Even More Important and Influential in the Future. International
Nursing Review, 65(2), 145-147. doi:10.1111/inr.12463
Kraus, D. (2016). Why Is Child
Abuse Awareness Important to Trauma Nurses? Journal of Trauma Nursing, 23(3),
116-117. doi:10.1097/jtn.0000000000000198
Mcloughlin, K. A. (2017). The
Importance of Purpose in Whole Health and Well-Being. Journal of the
American Psychiatric Nurses Association, 23(5), 375-375. doi:10.1177/1078390317728481
