Patient Centered Care

My recent experience as a liver transplant patient at the new UCLA hospital
is illustrative of the usual problems: nurses promised to get me copies of
blood test results but rarely carried through even after several prompts
from me; some orders for pain-killing drugs expired because the day shift
forgot to get a doctor to sign new ones before the docs went home for the
day; sometimes nurses would say ³I¹m on my way² and then not show up for an
hour; issues would come up during the day that required a doc¹s involvement
but none were available.

However, there¹s a broader issue: The building¹s designers assumed patients
and workers would change their behaviors in order to ³get along² with the
architecture. Thus, nurses in ICU complained that nobody bothered to ask
them about the work stations outside patient rooms; visitors get lost easily
because there are no clear paths marked from point A to point B, etc. and
the handout maps are virtually unintelligible.

Overall, though, it was my best experience in terms of actual hands-on
health care.


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