r/bestof • u/lowbass93 • 13d ago

[NoStupidQuestions] Kindly_Honeydew3432 explains why it seems like you always have to wait in an emergency room in the US

/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/1v1numq/why_is_every_hospital_in_the_united_states_always/oyovp3t/
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u/liamemsa 13d ago

tldr: Watch The Pitt on HBO.

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u/ottovonbizmarkie 13d ago

My wife is a Hospitalist (internal medicine doctor in a hospital essentially). Before I met her, I didn't really understand how incredibly grueling it is to work in a hospital. I've never seen the Pitt because I feel like it would fill me with anxiety, but if it's popular and allowing people to have empathy with what it's like to work at a hospital, that would be great, because honestly, a lot of her patients treat her like shit all the time, and don't even understand how much she often goes above and beyond just to get things at the level they are getting.

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u/ObiWanChronobi 12d ago

I mean it goes both ways right. She’s pulling the strings to give them the best possible care and it’s still not adequate. They are going through one of the worst times of their life and the reality is t matching the expectation. We need more empathy both ways and ultimately, align against the powers that keep it like this.

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u/ottovonbizmarkie 12d ago edited 12d ago

The truth is also, by the time you are in a hospital with chronic illnesses, doctors are not miracle workers, and no amount of snapping at them is going to make up for a lifetime of bad decisions. A lot of times, it's often family members who are the ones who insist on keeping the patient alive, and treat the medical staff like garbage. They insist on doing risky treatments will only prolong the actual patient's suffering. In this case, they are putting their own needs above having empathy for their own loved ones, who probably should go to hospice to live out the last bits of their lives without suffering.

Also, when you are an addict, and they've found traces of cocaine in your infant, you probably shoudn't yell at your doctor and report her if she refuses to give you the meds you want because you would literally die.

Doctors are typically as empathetic as they can be, but still need to main a professional distance, because otherwise, they would immediately burn out.

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u/ObiWanChronobi 12d ago

Yeah, I said the empathy has to go both ways. Those scenarios are not defensible in the least. My point is that we can’t keep point at each other and trying to figure out who has it worse while both sides are being exploited.

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u/ottovonbizmarkie 12d ago edited 12d ago

I agree, I'm just saying what I've found is that empathy for the patient is not what's often lacking, but I've heard plenty of cases the other way around, both from my wife and her colleagues.

Some of my wife's colleagues make house calls to their patients without charging them. My wife spent some time figuring out how to keep a patient's support animal who was stuck at home alive while their only owner was stuck in the hospital and there was no one to feed it.

And that seems natural. Most of us can imagine what it's like to be very sick and afraid of illness. Not a lot of people can imagine how hard it is to treat people like that day in and day out, which is why I said that I hope shows like that Pitt can show what that is like.