Dear Healthcare Workers

Dear Healthcare Workers,

I would like to thank everyone that takes care of me in advance. Your work is greatly appreciated and needed, but I would like to go over a few things before you start taking care of me and my family. If you are taking care of me, please just ask my spouse for my medical, medication, and any allergy history. This information will probably change from the time I write this letter, but I can assure you that what she tells you is accurate. If you question any of it, please use your EMR as a reference. This letter is intended for you to understand what kind of care that I expect. It is quite simple, but please read just in case our expectations are different.

              As I stated above you can check your EMR for my history, but if something has changed since my last visit I am going to assume that some of the information has holes in it and/or is an inaccurate source of information. My request is that you talk to me if you have any questions, and if I am too sick my family knows me pretty well. When you come in to assess me please take time to focus on me. If you don’t have time to focus on me, then please assess me when you do. I am not asking for any more than 10 minutes of your time. If your EMR does not give you the time you need then please feel free to write your assessment on a piece of paper and put it in later, I will not be offended. Also, if you could have a person actually lay eyes on me every hour that would be great. I only ask this, because I am sick, weak, and in a new environment. I am probably really scared and confused, so just knowing that someone cares enough to see if I want water, need to go to the bathroom, if I am in pain, or if I am alive would be comforting. Please do a thorough assessment each shift, because things change from shift to shift. I know it is convenient for you to copy my assessment from shift to shift, but that doesn’t mean I do not need a head to toe assessment. If nothing has changed from your last assessment I could honestly care less how you chart it. Not only does this keep me safe, it keeps your license safe in case of litigation or a root cause analysis.

              Now that we have my assessment out of the way I suspect you will need to prescribe me or give me my medications. I ask that you please talk to me or my family member about what medication you are going to prescribe and administer to me, since it is my body and all. My family and I are lucky enough to have a pretty good understanding of medications, so we shouldn’t give you a hard time. If we do ask a questions can you please, at minimum, act like you are engaged and not rushed? If there are too many questions about the medications, could you please just print out basic education for me and my family so that I may have a foundation to go by? That approach will help us ask more educated questions, and should save you a little time. What would be really nice is if you could be proactive and just print it out, this should give us time to digest the information. That would just save everyone a bunch of time. When administering or prescribing medications please make sure it is on the right patient. My armband should have the right name, birthdate, and account number. This should have been checked on admission, but there is always human error. I just want to make sure that I am getting the right medications to manage my diagnosis.

              As you come into my room to talk to me and my family I ask that you be in the moment as well. If you cannot do that, I would appreciate if you could find me someone who will be in the moment. I would hate to be an inconvenience or waste your time. I apologize if this sounds harsh, but I feel that it is a privilege to take care of patients not a right. If I sound like I am entitled it is because I am. I am entitled to the right to be treated like a human being. I do not want to be treated like a product on an assembly line, that’s all. Also, if I use my call light and ask for something, do not tell me you will be right down, then never show up. If I ask you for something when you are in my room, do not tell me you will be right back, I believe that is an empty promise. This isn’t your fault, but you cannot control other patient’s needs and there could be a delay. Simply let me know that you will follow through with my request and estimate a time. If you can delegate the task to someone less busy, that works just fine for me.

              Lastly, I ask that you do not gossip to me about your organization or health care in general for that matter. I have my own problems, and I came to you to fix them. It is not my problem that your wireless is slow, you are short staffed, your EMR sucks, or that you have competing priorities. My job is to get better not to solve your problems. It’s much like going to a restaurant and your food is cooked wrong and the waitress explains to that they were running short on staff or you have a new cook. I honestly don’t care, if you have a problem then voice it to your administration.

              I believe these requests are simple and straightforward. It isn’t that I don’t respect your work, I do, but our focus should be on how to manage my disease process. If that sounds selfish I apologize, but how would you feel if you were me? I know if I received this letter prior to taking care of a patient, I would take it seriously. Here is a little advice if you are unable to meet these requests. Take CONTROL of the situation. If you do not like the status quo, then try your hardest to fix the barriers you face. Complaining and not having a solution solves nothing. I know we are all guilty of it, but you do have CONTROL. Your voice is louder than you will ever know. If you want to fix an EMR, then talk to your administration. If you can’t fix it at that level, there is no one is stopping you from going a step further and fixing it yourself on a larger scale. If you don’t know computers, talk to someone in healthcare that does and see what you can do together. What I have learned is that if you are passionate about a cause, you will do everything in your power to fix it, and if you don’t know how to fix it you will find out. We went into healthcare to be patient advocates, not to complain about how things don’t work. If you have an idea on how to make patient care better then go for it.  Are you worried what people are going to say? Are you going to get scolded for trying to provide better patient care? If you are concerned about that then you either need to leave your organization or maybe even health care for that matter.  I hope this letter gives you a little better perspective of what I need as a patient. I also hope this inspires you to reflect on the current state of health care and focus on how you can be the part of the solution and not just part of the problem. This isn’t a competition on who has a better solution. This is about my health, my family, and my body so please respect that.

Sincerely,

Future Patient