How many times have we heard of someone who went into the hospital for one thing, developed pneumonia, died? I now understand why.
1. Patients and their advocates do not learn enough about what's going on, do not ask enough questions and accept too many bogus answers from employees who do not have the patient's best interests in mind by doing their job fully.2. Hospitals are like any other workplace. They have employees with the same job title that provide different levels of care. What we know about so-called modern medicine, is that it is designed for white folks, not black folks; therefore there are medications, treatments, protocols that increase the risk of receiving improper healthcare, simply because you are black, not because of incompetence.
3. The schools that teach healthcare and the healthcare industry across the board are fragmented and do not take a holistic approach, thus everything they do is without regard to the whole body set of systems and the patient's unique set of conditions and needs.4. Despite patient rights to ask questions and have them answered and accept or refuse treatment, a parade of hospital staff come in and out the room and do things without explanation and without connection to all else being done.
5. Anyone who goes into a hospital should have an advocate with them at all times, 24 hours a day until released. If the person does not have a private room and there are not at least two advocates of the same gender as the patient, then hopefully the same sex gender can stay during the night after visiting hours and the opposite sex gender can stay during the day. Insist on staying after visiting hours so you can care for and look after the patent who continues to get care and treatment when no advocate is around. This is always dangerous, even when the patient is clear-minded, they are still sick, thus need help in understanding and making decisions.6. If you look up the cause of pneumonia you will get explanations that avoid blaming the hospital. This is some bullshit. If you get pneumonia while not in the hospital, someone is responsible, such as yourself. Also responsible is the set of conditions you are exposed to and lack of early recognition of symptoms and early intervention.
7. Black folks know parents always warned us to dress warmly in cool weather, otherwise we would get pneumonia. The number one thing a hospital does is keep patient rooms chilly nonstop. To make it worse, if a black person is in a room with a cold lover, the room will be kept to the temperature the cold lover prefers. To make it worse, hospital gowns, sheets and blankets, are pathetic in keeping a person warm, even if you use more than one blanket.8. Bring your own blankets and comforters. Bring socks for the patient, bring something to keep their head and ears covered. Patients are sick and need to use their body energy to fight illness, not to keep warm. The body first uses energy to keep warm and keep vital organs functioning. Then if there's extra energy, it goes toward healing and fighting pathogens.
9. Every patient has the right to ask for whatever they need, more blankets, more food, more juice, turn the Air off, put me in a private room, put me in a room with a person who does not like the cold, keep the window shade up and let the sunshine in, and so on.10. Contrary to popular belief, a hospital does not have your best interests in mind. Their priority is to make money and claim no responsibility when things go from bad to worse.
11. Medical training worldwide does not account for the whole body system and how all conditions affect those systems. Yet, when you are in a hospital all your body systems are there and are being affected, but each thing done by various staff and ordered by doctors is not inspected regarding how it will affect each system and work with other treatments. For instance, pain medication and antibiotics will affect heart rate and blood pressure, yet staff will tell you these vital signs are outside the norm, but will not tell you how what they are doing is affecting those vital signs and neither will they adjust what they are doing. You must ask, question and state your preferences.12. Notoriously, hospitals order a constant barrage of tests by various staff who each then can bill the insurance for their services. For instance, the CNA takes your vital signs, and then the respiratory therapist comes into to check your oxygen level, that is one of the vital signs the CNA checked.
13. Notoriously the hospital will set you up with IV's, antibiotics, oral meds, mediccation by needle, different categories of staff taking vitals and all sorts of things taking place just because it's billable and just because it's their policy and procedure, not because it's what's best for the patient on that day according to the patient's improved, worsening or same condition.14. Going back to the room temperature, hospital staff are trained to regulate the patient's body temperature according to the hospital staff's temperature comfort. This is crazy. The person is sick. We all know that the body raises its own temperature in order to fight pathogens and to heal. Yet staff will keep rooms cold, take off blankets, leave the patient's extremities, neck and chest uncovered, especially when the patient is asleep and no advocate is around. The next time you get sick at home, keep the house cold and lay around with a hospital gown on and the thinnest sheet and blanket.
15. Another major factor that contributes to getting pneumonia in hospitals is when a person is on oxygen or a ventilator. This keeps cool air going into the lungs. Does anyone see a problem? Keep that patient warmer. If not, the body will get exhausted trying to stay warm and fight pathogens and heal, As a result, pathogens will multiply and gain a stronger upper hand. Meanwhile the patient's vital signs will be terrible and the hospital staff won't try to troubleshoot why, except to give more medications. No other basic common sense adjustments to recovering from colds, flus and pneumonia. Meanwhile all those medications come with a few dozen negative imbalancing effects called side effects. The negative side effects upset, cells, organs, systems, which causes the body to use additional energy and function less efficiently. This contributes to weakness, less ability to fend off fiends and heal.16. No person should go into the hospital and get worse unless the illness or trauma that sent them to the hospital was already significantly unstabilized and immediately life-threatening. You mean to tell me a hospital can't catch early signs of pneumonia and make adjustments to the entire set of conditions the patient is experiencing rather than simply prescribing antibiotics and still keeping the patient cold and on low nutrition and having a toxic GI tract. Hospitals don't check as often as needed but do check some things more often simply because of billing.
17. Another major factor is when a patient is being hydrated via an IV and is not taking in liquid or food orally. IV's go directly into the blood stream. Meanwhile, the GI tract is still there from the patients mouth to the anus. When no liquid or food enters into and passes through the GI tract, naturally occurring mucous builds up, cakes up, clogs up, bogs down, along the entire path. Oral food and liquid intake prevents this. If a person takes in little to no food or liquid orally while in the hospital the GI tract becomes toxic and a breeding ground for pathogens that migrate travel into the bloodstream and lungs. This is the main source of the pathogens that cause pneumonia in hospitals. It is these sets of conditions. This is also another way acid reflux is created when the GI tract is not used for days and there is sickness elsewhere in the body causing a general upset stomach feeling that ramps up to reflux.In other words, the GI tract is a vital organ.
18. Hospital staff will uncover a patient to check something, then fail to cover the patient completely up to their neck and over their shoulders. Imagine if no one is with the patient and this goes on all day and even all night when temperatures drop even more. The patient cannot recover as quickly and can get additional infections. Meanwhile nowhere in doctor's or other staff thought processes do they try to troubleshoot the patent's conditions, treatments and basic environmental conditions so as to make immediate adjustments. I am repeating on purpose.
19. For some reason hospital staff think if a patient is warm to the staffer's touch, the patient is too warm. We all know staying warm and hydrated helps loosen mucous and helps it drain through nose, pee and poop and sometimes helps cough it up if the patient is aware enough to spit it out. I'm amazed and dismayed at how disconnected hospital staff is to basic healthcare that you would do at home when feeling any kind of sick. Staffers are too married to what they've been taught by some school and some workplace. Patients and advocates must use common sense in their own care.20. Don't we know a sick person needs a constant level of high quality nutrition in order to fight pathogens and heal? Yet, hospital food is insufficient. An advocate must bring food or insist on nutritious items.
21. To make matters, worse, hospitals serve breakfast lunch and dinner four hours apart then from 4pm to 7am the next morning, there is no food, that's 15 hours without food intake. A sick person is unlikely to eat all of their breakfast, lunch and dinner, and even if they did, the body is using those resources quickly. An advocate must help the patient get good nutrition throughout the day and night when the person is even partly awake.22. Hospital staff are supposed to feed patients who can't feed themselves. Good luck with that. It can take anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour to properly assist a patient.
23. Hospital staff like to keep patients lying practically flat. This does not help mucous elimination. But staff ain't thinking about that. All I keep hearing them say is they want the patient to be comfortable and sleep. More important than sleep is the proper temperature, nutrition, as few side effect filled medications as possible and other proper care. Sleep will come on its own.Sick people at home or in hospitals need to move their bodies in order to help circulation. If they can't sit up or get up or move their arms and legs, then they must at least be turned and repositioned in the bed frequently.
24. Anytime a patient is on a ventilator, IV, feeding tube, catheter or anything that must be inserted into the body, the body must treat it as a foreign item, thus have an immune response, thus use energy, divert resources. Each invasive treatment carries the risk of infection.
25. You can get MRSA and other infections in hospitals. They are dangerous places to those who do not understand the dangers and guard against them.
26. I repeat, the medical community across the board is not good at customizing and making adjustments and diagnosing and treating causes.
A hospital is the perfect set of conditions for anyone to get pneumonia if you are admitted. The risk is higher for black folks, whether or not there are websites that admit this. There is not a single workplace where all or most workers take pride in their job and are not affected by biases, prejudices and discriminations.27. So imagine being a black advocate for a black patient in a medical setting or hospital where 99 percent of the staff is white and here you are questioning them and asking them to do their jobs.
So pick your battles and ask for the most important things. Bring the patient better home-prepared food. The hospital nursing stations on each floor have microwaves and refrigerators. 28. No patient should expect their PCP (primary care physician), ER doctors, monitoring physicians, any specialist or any other doctor or medical staff to take into consideration their full situation and health needs when those same people must address dozens of patients each day and are restrained by several factors, human skill, human concern, hiding behind a one size fits all protocol, and other limiting logic that allows them not to have to think too much or customize.
29. In hospital stays and ER visits there is a carousel of people that come in and out and take tests, draw blood and administer medications. Most of the time they do not explain and expect you to just accept and let them do what they've been told to do.
30. Ultimately all these things are the patient's, advocate's and family's responsibility. Each person must take full responsibility for their own health, their own healthcare, treatments, medications and making adjustments to the environment in which these things are received. You do not have to be overruled by anyone, no matter their job title. In all medical settings, they are getting paid to provide services and products to you. You are the customer. You are not their mindless rightless minion or follower of what they do and how they do it.31. What has just been explained is the perfect swarm and storm of conditions that can harm patients, and the perfect swarm and storm that patients and their advocates can, should and must do to always remain the primary caregiver.
32. Air and breath is formed from water and heat. In order for us humans to breathe, requires heat, staying warm to allow heat to flow, moisture to flow, air to flow.33. Pneumonia is the number one hospital acquired infection that leads to death. Hospitals have lots of experience with pneumonia, yet they continue to do the same things and expect the same results....for people to die once pneumonia becomes an added complication. This should be very scary to any patient or their loved ones.
34. Search treatments for pneumonia. Search how to loosen and remove mucous from the lungs.35. Since fools believe more than they know, check out, what are the health conditions of people who get pneumonia in hospitals
36. People don't get pneumonia because they are in the hospital, if so, staff and family members would get pneumonia on the regular, and die. People don't get pneumonia because they are in the hospital and sick, because if this was true, then admissions would far exceed discharges. People get pneumonia in hospitals when all conditions and care in the hospital are not properly managed.