Dumping Grounds

For visitors:

• Limit your stay to 10 minutes, 20 as an absolute maximum (if the patient is able to sit up, stick to ten if they’re in bed). Seriously. Recovering from a serious illness or surgery is hard work. The person you are going to visit is happy to see you, but they are also tired. How do I know they are tired? Because if they were not tired anymore, they’d be home. You are probably not the only visitor. If a patient who was in a chair asks to move back to the bed, that’s your cue to leave.
• Please do not bring up the â??worst case scenarioâ? that didn’t happen as something to be grateful for. The last thing that the patient (or their family for that matter) wants to hear is how bad things could have been. Be grateful that they are not. Don’t dwell on what might have happened. (I must have seen this violated at least 50 times in the past week. What is with people?!?!) If the only thing you can think of to say is how bad things might have been, or how close the patient was to death, then shut the hell up. No one, trust me on this, NO ONE wants to hear it.
• Don’t pester, annoy, or otherwise harass the patient with stories of your (or your relatives’) ill health or hospital stories. And for goodness sakes, don’t tell us that your Uncle Fred died just down the hall.
• Be careful not to tell a joke or amusing story if it is painful for the patient to laugh. Laughter is not always the best medicine if you’ve had abdominal surgery.
• If the worst were to happen, don’t ever, ever tell any surviving family members that â??things happen for a reason.â? No, they don’t. Sometimes shit just happens.
• Unless this is the patient’s first day of their first stay in a hospital ever, then they have heard whatever joke you are about to make about hospital food. Keep it to yourself.
• Do talk to them about normal things… the same stuff you would talk to them about on any other day… what happened in church on Sunday, what your kids are up to, current events, that you are keeping them in your prayers, etc. Remember the first rule. Keep it to 10 minutes.
• If you are a health care professional, DO NOT start inspecting dressings, incisions, stitches, equipment, or anything that happens to be oozing. The patient, and everyone else in the room, will find it off-putting. If you cannot restrain yourself, go back to work and check on your own patients.

For hospital personnel:

• Oh good grief, if you have three tasks that will require a bedridden patient to move around, especially if they find it painful to do so, do them at one time, not ten minutes apart from each other.
• DO NOT empty the receptacle that the catheter feeds into while the patient is trying to eat. It’ll still be there in 10 minutes. I promise. No one is interested in stealing a jar of urine. Except maybe Michael Irvin.
• Never, ever tell a family member of the patient that a setback is their fault. They are not in any frame of mind to appreciate sarcasm. Violation of this rule should be punished by IMMEDIATE dismissal from your employment. Forever. If, on the other hand, you were not being sarcastic, it should be punishable by death.

Yes, each and every one of these things I have seen happen in a hospital, although not all are references to my Mother’s recent stay.

I reserve the right to edit this post whenever I want. I’ll add things as I think of them.

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