Opinion
(2010-11-16)
BEAUFORT, NC
(pre) -
While nearly all of you were messing around in boats and getting tanned this past summer, I was hard at work on your behalf conducting Quality Assurance Checks on our two hospitals: Carteret General in Morehead City and Carolina East Medical Center in New Bern. I was not appointed by any hospital authority or group of anxious citizens. I carried out the Quality Assurance Checks simply because I was there, and had nothing else to do between being stuck with needles and being examined.The first Check began with my arrival scared, vomiting, and dizzy at the emergency room of Carteret General, on a gray, rainy morning in July. Right away I liked the smiling Triage Nurse. "You'll have a wait," she said truthfully. "All the rooms are full and they're lined up in the halls back there."
Must be a great place, I thought. People love to come here. Very soon I got an EKG and the expected aspirin, and before long, a tiny room of my own with medical personnel moving in and out, asking questions, worried about my pain. "No pain," I kept telling them. "I feel fine now." They were so polite that not one of them said, "Then what the heck are you doing here?"
That is how my two-day heart work-up began, during which every single nurse, doctor, nurse assistant, and technologist passed with flying colors. I loved them all. HOWEVER, beneath me the mattress groaned mournfully each time it changed shape. The pillows were hard and flat. Those items received a Below Par rating, but as I said, everything else was terrific including my heart and carotid arteries. And so, well content, I went home.
But, hah! This was only the beginning of an evil virus. It developed into pneumonia with accompanything asthmatic wheezes, and into the New Bern hospital I went for 6 days ample time to conduct another Quality Assurance Check. Despite being weak, sleepless from the Albuterol and steroids, and generally a pitiful mess, I paid attention and I knew what to watch for because our two daughters have doctorates in the medical field.
Did personnel disinfect hands on entering and leaving my room? Yes. Did staff ask me if there was anything else they could do before leaving? Yes. Did staff doctors actually talk to me or did they hang out in the halls, chatting with one another? They talked to me and they listened, which is even better! As the days went by, I began wishing I could just take the nurses and nurse assistants home with me. They were all as good as it gets. And these are people who work 12-hour shifts with grumpy patients.
I was offered the chance to go home on Saturday or Sunday. At home is the best possible Husband-Caregiver, but I chose Sunday just to be safe. That says a great deal about the hospital, I believe. And in a world full of appallingly bad news, isn't this a welcome pair of Quality Checks for those of us in Carteret and Craven counties?
Joan Carris 10/20/10
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