Hospital update but not really.

Things are going well here in hospital-land. I can't get over how much better the quality of care is in this wing compared to the Halifax Infirmary. The nurses have all been very friendly, the food isn't bad (as far as mass produced food goes, plus they give me lots of chips!), and it's quiet. Almost unbelieveably quiet.

I went out on pass this afternoon and when I returned at suppertime, I was astonished at how little noise there was. I had thought it was quiet because my room is at the end of the hall but it was quiet the entire way.  No patients were yelling, no loud TVs, no loud family running around, nothing. It is almost a place where someone could rest peacefully.

I honestly think a big difference is that everyone on the floor is an RN. Not to take away from LPNs or CCAs as they have a role in certain wings, but the fact that there is just one person responsible for all the care means they don't have that expectation that someone else is going to do all the little tasks like change the bedding or organise showers schedules.

It means that unlike Halifax, when you ask them to help you with a task, they help you with that task instead of delegating it to a third party. And instead of having a LPN check your vitals and a RN visiting to unhock the IV, and a CCA visiting to change the bedding, it all gets done in one visit. It means I feel more comfortable napping during the morning knowing that I'm not going to be disturbed all the time. It is such a different atmosphere compared to Halifax where the RNs only dispense medication and the LPNs or CCAs do everything else.

I'm not meaning to make the Halifax nurses sound lazy, they aren't, they work hard as their jobs are getting squeezed every year. It may be that their scope of practice doesn't even have them do the non-medical tasks anymore and that it's all been delegated to someone on a lower paygrade. However, whether intentional or not, that means that there are more people responsible for one patient which sounds like it should be better but instead it seems to cause confusion and instead of everything getting done, sometimes nothing would get done as everyone expected the other person to do it (ie. linen changing).

The other huge difference is that it is a dedicated respirology wing so all of the nurses know about the medication I'm taking and have all had many many patients with CF. No one wakes me up early to tell me to eat my breakfast or take my medication. They know to leave me alone unless it's important or I buzz them. Honestly, for a hospital stay, I have almost no complaints. When I compare it to Amys horrible experience at the Moncton Hospital, it's like I'm staying at a fancy hotel (if only the beds were bigger!). Halifax really needs to push for a respirology wing as I'm going to have high demands when I return to NS.