The End of It All

Welcome to my last blog post! This blog is meant to recap what my blog has mainly been about, and what my future plans continue to be. 

Throughout my blog I tried to touch on many different topics in healthcare, from many different aspects.  I also tried to use my personal experiences and goals, as well as ideas from outside knowledge to give you an interesting way to hear about new, as well as old, things happening in the world.  In writing these blog posts I have learned a lot.  This includes, more out-of-the-box thinking, time management, and writing your thoughts pen-to-paper (or in today's world, fingers-to-keyboard!)  These blogs have allowed me to express what I have learned about healthcare, and I am grateful I got to experience writing them. 

In my first post, I talked a lot about becoming a Radiation Therapist once graduated from my undergrad.  I still stand with that career goal, even though I know it will be a lot of work before I can get there.  I want to fully devote myself to my initial plan to help cancer patients as much as I can. I have seen many people who I know, some I am very close with, suffer from cancer.  Some of which have had worse outcomes than others.  I will continue to follow my personal mission of "wanting to help people" as much as I can in the process. I feel as though HMP is helping me prepare my knowledge to be thrown into the real world, and pursue my career path.  I am confident in my choice to become an HMP major, and am excited to see how I will excel upon graduating.

Overall, learning about any aspect of healthcare is important for people of all ages to know.  These blogs are just one of the many ways everybody can help spread their knowledge of healthcare topics to the world.  That is all I have for my blog posts, and I appreciate the people who took the time out of their day to read them! Thanks so much, and goodbye for now!

Greys Anatomy Season 14 Episode 8: Out of Nowhere

Since Greys Anatomy is my favorite show, and is very relevant to my major as well as my future career path, I knew I needed to blog about it at one point.  In watching last weeks episode, the first thing I thought of was our management class.

There was a crisis in the hospital where a cyber attack took place.  All of a sudden, there was a mass failure throughout the hospital on all of the heart monitors.  It sounded as if everybody was coding (or flat lining) which definitely does not happen every day.  They soon realize that this was a hospital-wide issue.  A message popped up on every piece of technology asking for a specific sum of money, with a message stating that the hackers "controlled their system now".  This meant that complete strangers now had access to every patient in Seattle Grace Hospital's medical records. This is when the Chief of Surgery had to step in to assess the situation.  The Chief's first goal was to remind all of the doctors that they need to continue to do their jobs, but the old fashion way.  Check, double check, and check again every test you do on the patients and write EVERYTHING down. Next, she had to assure the patients and their families that everyone was going to be okay. Then, she had to deal with the FBI.  The Chief thought everybody was calm, and dealing with the situation until the FBI showed up, and this sparked controversy again.  They went into a separate room with the Chief, and the old Chief and discussed the next steps quietly.  The hackers were asking for a large sum of money (Bit coins) in order to give back control to the hospital.  The Chief wanted to give the money, because patient care comes first, however, the situation was torn because the FBI said this was an ongoing investigation.  If the hospital gave the hackers the money, it would help Seattle Grace out of this hack, but allow the hackers to realize they won, and will probably strike somewhere else again.    
You will need to watch the episode to see how it turned out, but I felt as if this was the most relevant episode to what we learn about in Management. 

This episode goes hand-in-hand to the idea of Crisis Management that Susanna Fier spoke about in our class on November 27th. I was able to relate the stories Fier spoke about in class to this episode, and it was able to give me a visual representation of what a person in charge during a crisis has to undergo.  Although Greys Anatomy is a television show, with a lot of crazy, unimaginable things that happen in it, it can be very informative.  I definitely have learned a lot of interesting facts, and seen cool cases over the 14 seasons of the show!

A Young CNA During the Holidays

As the holiday seasons are fast approaching, I start to think about the people who cannot spend time with their families, have great food, and be in the comfort of their own home.  It is sad to see people who are alone on the holidays, but you know what is worse than that? Being alone and in the hospital as well.  One of my best friends is a Certified Nurses Assistant (CNA) at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge. She is an aspiring future Nurse, and is gaining a lot of knowledge and experience through this job at Mount Auburn.  She works long hours at the hospital, and has to travel over an hour away from school to home every weekend to donate her time to these sick patients.  She experiences a lot for a young college student working in a hospital.  As we know, this past week was Thanksgiving.  She explained to me that every day is a tough day for the patients, but holiday's are amongst the hardest.  She said the hospital does get busy with visitors during this time, however, there are still a good amount of people who do not get any visitors at all.  This is extremely saddening.  Not only do some people get no visitors, but there are many patients who are admitted into the hospital during the holidays with excessive alcohol consumption.  This goes to show you another example of how many people suffer with loneliness on the holidays.  It is a difficult job to do what my friend does at such a young age, but she is experiencing a lot of real-world situations that will help her better prepare to become a successful nurse one day.

One specific area in which she said is emotional, especially during the holidays, is when she has to take care of a suicidal patient.  This is a tough job, because as a CNA, you have to be aware and attentive at all times.  "If a patient is suicidal, they cannot have phones with cords, knives, forks, razors, anything sharp, or anything they could put around their neck", says my friend.  Her daily tasks in supervising a suicidal patient would be to just sit with the patients, watch them, and take them to the bathroom.  Although it is not the busiest of work, it is a very important job.  She did say, depending upon the case, some patients need more than one supervisor at once.  For example, if they are violent or a threat, there usually would need to be more than one supervisor.  Overall, my friend has a very important, yet tough job.  She explains it is very hard to see what she sees at such a young age, but she is grateful that she gets to help people every day, while doing what she loves.  I think she is going to make a great Nurse one day!

     

Hospitals Carry Infections Too

Although people may think that hospitals are the safest, cleanest place to be when your sick, those people are wrong.  Hospitals are "breeding grounds" for infections.  You can get an infection from any of the equipment, supplies, and other sicknesses that are traveling through the hospital.  Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA) is the most common infection to travel around a hospital. It is resistant to all antibiotics, and you can receive it from dirty equipment.  It is an infection in your skin and can be very dangerous. It is spread by contact, and can also be called a staph infection.  This is the most common disease that spreads, but how is it controlled?

There are many precautions when it comes to controlling the spread of MRSA.  Six standard precautions hospitals have to follow are hand washing, gloving, mouth, nose, eye protection, gowning, important device handling of patient care equipment, and appropriate handle of laundry.  The same procedures, and then some, go for contact precautions as well.  It seems as if the reoccurring theme is to protect anything used in the hospital that could potentially spread this disease.  This is difficult because staff, nurses, and doctors need to make sure they do not skip the step of putting on gloves or wiping down a machine after it is used. If something were to go wrong, there would be a huge liability on their hands.

Therefore, be cautious when your in the hospital, and make sure you are receiving sterilized supplies and any one who is working on you has gloves on! You can never be to careful.   

https://www.sharecare.com/health/infectious-disease/what-kinds-infections-get-hospital
https://www.cdc.gov/mrsa/

Finally, Maine's Medicaid Expansion

It is official as of yesterday, November 7, 2017 Maine, the last state in New England who had yet to expand Medicaid, did it! This vote makes Maine the 32nd state to expand Medicaid under Obamacare.  This will now benefit all of the low-income adults who qualify for coverage in Maine.  This also represents a set back for the Republican party, who continues to try and veto the expansion of Medicaid.  This ballot was known as "Question 2".  Over $1.5 million dollars was invested into the expansion in Maine.  "Some 80,000 adults will qualify under the expansion, according to independent estimates from a Maine legislative fiscal office, adding to the nearly 12 million people in the 31 states and District of Columbia who have already obtained coverage through the program" (Politico-Maine Voters Approve Medicaid).  We actually just had a question on our Health Policy exam last week that asked, 'what is the only state in New England who has yet to expand Medicaid?'. The timing is pretty ironic.  Until this Policy class, I had no idea all of New England expanded, except for Maine. 

It will now remain difficult for Medicaid to expand in many of the other states because they are mostly predominately "red states".  This means that Republicans control the governors "mansion or state legislature".  However, if people continue to push as they did for Maine, it will eventually become easier to expand Medicaid in those states if that is what people wanted.  There are now 18 states that have not expanded Medicaid under Obamacare.  All are led by Democrats, except for Virginia and North Carolina, who are led by Republicans.  Those might be the more difficult ones to budge. 

https://www.politico.com/story/2017/11/07/maine-voters-medicaid-obamacare-244675

Halloween Health and Safety

Happy Halloween! Today is one of those holiday's where you can dress up to be any person or any thing you want.  That can be a lot of fun, but it can also be very dangerous and cause chaos to many communities.  Aside from the psycho people who use halloween for crime,  Halloween is known to be the "deadliest day" for children pedestrian fatalities.  "One hundred and fifteen child pedestrian fatalities occurred on Halloween over the 21 years of our analysis.  This is an average of 5.5 fatalities each year on October 31, which is more than double the average number of 2.6 fatalities for other days" (Halloween Deadliest Day Article).  Car crashes/accidents are what kill most pedestrians on this day.

Emergency-room visits are said to be the "scariest" part of Halloween for hospitals.  "We can't say for sure that Halloween is the most-dangerous holiday of all.  But it wasn't Valentine's Day that sent 4,400 people to hospitals last year.  That's the number of emergency-department visits attributed to Halloween activities between Oct. 1and Nov. 30 in 2013, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission" (The Columbus Dispatch-Emergency-room visits scariest part of Halloween).  The accidents range from carving pumpkins, to people getting hit with cars.  People are advised to wear bright clothing and carry flash lights.  The holiday is meant for fun and games, not to be stuck in an emergency room dressed up in your favorite costume. 

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2014/10/28/Halloween_scares.html

http://www.bestplaces.net/docs/studies/halloween_deadliest_day.aspx

Long-term Care

I thoroughly enjoyed our class speaker, Tom Lavallee, from Monday's lecture on long-term care.  He talked about many interesting points of his experience in working in these types of facilities.  Part of my reasoning for wanting to become a radiation therapist was because I liked to help people will cancer, of all ages, but specifically, I like working with the elderly.  I have a strong place in my heart for the elderly, and always have.  They are so sweet (most of the time), and always look at you as if they see themselves in you, so many years ago.  I find their stories and compassion for things so interesting.  I somehow get along very well with them as well.  It takes certain people, and specific characteristics to be able to be a good employee in a long term care facility.  You have to love what you do, and want to do it. 

 My grandmother is currently struggling with huge health obstacles, and was just moved from a hospital into a long-term care facility.  She is not an easy patient to have.  She likes her meals exactly right, when she rings the buzzer she expects someone to be there instantly, and she does not like people telling her what to do.  That is how she felt while she was staying in the hospital.  However, since placed in this long-term care facility, although she is in pain, she is more comfortable here than she was in the hospital.  She has told me all of her nurses are extremely kind and generous, and help her whenever she needs help.  She is now happy because she is able to eat turkey and mashed potatoes, not only because of her diet change, but because it is actually edible!  That goes to show how much of an upgrade long-term care facilities are from hospitals.  It seems as if their goal is to just keep the patient as happy and comfortable as they can.  Long-term care facilities used to be a place people were sent to live out the rest of their lives comfortably.  Now, they are looked at more as rehabilitation centers.  I agree with that statement because yes, my grandmother is very sick, but she is out of a hospital now and in a place of rest.  She is here in order to make her feel better and work to getting stronger, and that is just what they are doing.  

Overall, I think long-term care is a great part of healthcare.  It shows that our elderly are treated with the most care and compassion.  It is hard for some elderly people to move out of their homes, and become dependent on other people.  But with a good, welcoming staff, it will help them make their stay as "home-y" as possible.