by Nick Jacobs

From the 1976 movie “Network,” Howard Beale, the news anchor who was verging on a meltdown said: “I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell - 'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Things have got to change.”

While recently visiting a friend at a nursing home, she looked up at me and said, “Why do you think the people who work here feel the need to come into my room at 5 AM, throw on the overhead lights and say, “It’s time to wake up!”

As a patient, I once asked a technician why she needed to take my blood at 2:30 A.M., she replied, “I have to because your physician comes to see you at 4 AM, and he gets very angry when he doesn’t have your blood tests and lab results.” When I asked her why the doctor makes rounds an hour before most musicians return home from their night time job, she smiled and said, “He doesn’t like to talk to the families, and they’re never here that early.”

If you’re a physician, your response is, “If I don’t make rounds early enough, I can’t see enough patients during the day to even begin to meet my financial obligations for staffing my office, for medical school loans or for my daily living,” but what about those docs who do come at a descent time? How do they do it? Here’s a better question. Do you avoid talking to the families?

Of course, if you work in the medical profession, your immediate knee jerk reaction to my other example is going to be, “We have to get them up and give them their medicine. We have a dozen patients and only so much time to get them ready for the day.” Yet, someone on that list has to be your first wake up and someone the last. What goes into that decision making process? Is it YOUR decision based on YOUR wants and needs?

There have been hundreds of cases of which I have been made aware in my health care career where the convenience to the patient was the very last priority on the list. The concept of Patient Centered Care is actually considered revolutionary in this field, and the fact that someone believes that you should focus on the patient, their needs, their convenience and their wants is revolutionary tells you how very upside down this system is.

When the radiologist takes an hour and a half for lunch while a patient languishes in an operating or waiting room waiting for the results of their tests; when the nurse, nurse’s aid or therapist builds their schedule around their breaks, and looks at the lighted call bell as an inconvenience, the system needs changed. Insensitivity toward the customer is rampant.

One of my favorite stories was of a local luminary who had joint replacement surgery. He rang the alert bell and began a two hour wait. Finally, he picked up the phone, called the outside number for the facility, asked the operator for the nurse’s station on the floor where he was a patient, and then said, “This is Mr. Blank. I’m a patient here on your floor. Could you please send someone to my room?” It was the only way he could get their attention.

This is not an indictment of the medical profession. It is an indictment of every profession. If you are a patient, a customer, a client or even a citizen interacting with a bureaucrat, remember one thing; without you, they have no business, no income. So, go to your window and yell, “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore,” and then hand them a copy of the movie, “The Doctor,” it shows how uncomfortable the shoe can be on the other foot.