38 secrets hospitals won’t tell you

Don’t assume the food is what you should be eating. Patient nutrition is often an afterthought, with doctors needing greater recognition of the nutrition needs of their patients. For elderly patients, particularly, malnourishment could be exacerbated during their hospital stay.
Professor Ian Caterson, Boden Professor of Human Nutrition at the University of Sydney, MJA Insight, 2014

Make sure you ask how to manage your condition when you leave hospital. An HCF health insurance fund survey found that 13% of patients weren’t asked whether they would have the help they needed at home, and almost a third were not provided information in writing on symptoms or health problems to look out for when they were discharged.
HCF Survey, 2013

Before you leave the hospital, demand that your follow-up appointment be already scheduled. I’ve found that is the single most effective strategy hospitals can use to reduce your chance of readmission, but it still rarely happens. Make sure you’ve been connected to the next person [in the medical process] who will take care of you.
Elizabeth Bradley, professor of public health at Yale University
Find out how to get the most out of your next medical visit.

One study found that patients forget 40-80% of what doctors and nurses tell them, even if they’re nodding their heads. Have someone with you to take notes or ask if you can record what the doctor says on a smartphone. The most critical time to record is at discharge, when you receive crucial information about medications and next steps.
Karen Curtiss

Get copies of your lab tests, and scans before you leave the hospital, along with your discharge summary and operative report if you had surgery. It can be shockingly difficult for me to get copies of those things.
Dr Roy Benaroch, paediatrician
Should patients be able to read their own medical records?

Don’t let loved ones spend the night alone in a hospital. It’s important someone is there if they get confused or need help getting to the bathroom or if their breathing pattern changes. If the hospital has restrictive visiting hours, ask if it will make an ­exception.
Dr Michele Curtis

Every time I operate on a patient I have to remind myself that this patient is a member of my family. It’s so easy to rush an operation if you have got to go to a concert that night. It’s so easy to wake up in a bad mood and go to work and treat your patients badly. It’s so easy to ignore the family who wants to speak to you at 10pm and you want to go home and have dinner and see your kids. I have to consciously say to myself “Charlie, wait, you’re a member of that family. What if that was your child on the table?”
Charlie Teo, neurosurgeon

My worst moment ever was on New Year’s Eve in 2008, when the code-blue pager went off. A baby we’d operated on had stopped breathing. Ten of us were frantically doing everything possible, but we couldn’t resuscitate her. I had to tell her parents that their firstborn daughter had died. I was up all night grieving with them. Every New Year’s Eve, I think about them.
Dr James Pinckney

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