Best of 2015: Filming in the ER: A Patient Perspective

To close out another fabulous year we are going to be re-running some of our favorite posts from this year. Today we start with a post from one of the original Disruptive Women in Health Care bloggers, Glenna Crooks. She wrote this engaging and informative post back in January.

Several years ago, chest pains woke me from a sound sleep at 2 AM.
I knew it might be a heart attack.
I decided against seeking care.
I had my reasons: far too many stories and far too many IOM reports about what happens in hospitals.
If death was to come, I preferred to be at home rather than in an uncompassionate, error-prone, care-mismanaged, expensive institution. It never occurred to me that the outcome would be good or that I’d actually benefit from emergency care.
This week’s reading of the Chanko family experience opened my eyes to a worse-case scenario. What could be worse than death in a hospital? Regardless of how traumatic our own traumas may be or how bad the outcome, some hospitals and television networks make them the subject of ‘drama-and-entertainment-masquerading-as-news-and-PR-and-public-service’ on national television. Years later, our own nightmare might come back to haunt unsuspecting family and friends.
The Chanko family story was as shocking as the chest pain had been. I didn’t realize our hospitals could sink so low.
I don’t have all the facts, only the New York Times and Pro Publica articles, but even if half of the story is accurate, it is damning commentary.
Acc...

Source: Disruptive Women in Health Care - December 23, 2015 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: dw at disruptivewomen.net Tags: Patients Source Type: blogs