When You Have a Family Member in the Hospital You Start to Realize How Much It Helps to Know How To Navigate the Hospital World!!

Its been a stressful week for me and I'm glad that I pre-wrote & scheduled my posts for this week because I would have had to take a blogging hiatus!  I have a close family member in the hospital and they are getting better but I've become acutely aware how hard it is to navigate the system as a non-medical person!  


Sometimes I felt like I was translating a foreign language when explaining to my family what was going on.  This is not because my family is not intelligent--they are, extraordinarily so in my opinion:-)--but the medical world & the outside world are SO far apart sometimes!!!  


I've realized this before (& I'm sure my doc/nurse/etc readers will agree that we are aware there is some translation needed from medical lingo to layperson speak) but every time I'm on the other side of the fence (coming from the patient's side as opposed to the doctor's side) I wonder how people without medical family members figure out what is going on!!!????


I had already planned a post for this week on "Getting the Best Medical Care: Tips for Patients" (ironic, huh!) but I think I'm going to need to expand that post into two separate posts:  one for inpatient/hospital care and one for outpatient care.   Keep your eye out.  I have to say that when these posts come out I'd really recommend emailing them to family & friends.  I think it can make a huge difference in your hospital & outpatient experiences to know how to the system works from a doc's perspective as well as know how to get the best out of your doctors, nurses, social workers, techs & therapists!!