There is far more to life than most people know!
=======================
Iatrogenic illness
It could also be due to legitimate and widely accepted side effects of medical treatment, such as the 'normal' side effects of drugs, or the 'normal' risks associated with surgery, chemotherapy and other medical treatment.
This article on iatrogenic illness was originally published in a 1993 issue of The Good Life.
Since then, the subject has been much more widely discussed and iatrogenic disease is now considered the third leading cause of death in the United States and other developed countries.
The original article was titled...
How to survive in a 'medical factory'? To survive in a hospital, someone once said, you have to be very healthy. It’s ironical; but true. Hospitals are dangerous places. Studies of iatrogenic illness – illnesses “caused by doctors” – suggest that 5 to 30 percent of hospital patients develop major or minor complications from the treatment they receive.
Between 0.5 and 2 percent die. The percentage seems small. But the total figures are staggering.
Iatrogenic illness deadlier than Aids
In Health at the Crosswords, Dean Black, MD, points out: “Aids
killed roughly 30,000 people between 1981 and 1987... The number of
direct and indirect deaths from iatrogenic illness during the same
seven-year period falls somewhere between 1,000,000 and 4,000,000."
This should not come as any surprise if you consider that the hospitals are:
Since then, the subject has been much more widely discussed and iatrogenic disease is now considered the third leading cause of death in the United States and other developed countries.
The original article was titled...
How to survive in a 'medical factory'? To survive in a hospital, someone once said, you have to be very healthy. It’s ironical; but true. Hospitals are dangerous places. Studies of iatrogenic illness – illnesses “caused by doctors” – suggest that 5 to 30 percent of hospital patients develop major or minor complications from the treatment they receive.
Between 0.5 and 2 percent die. The percentage seems small. But the total figures are staggering.
Iatrogenic illness deadlier than Aids
|
|
- Breeding grounds for many bacteria, especially “super-bacteria” that are resistant to antibiotics.
- Sick buildings, where the air is filled with the smell of drugs, chemicals and human discharges.
- Training centers for medical students, newly-graduated doctors and student nurses.
- Error– prone organizations where drugs, test results and even people can easily get mixed up.
- 2,980 open-heart operations
- 1.3 million laboratory tests
- 73,320 electrocardiograms
- 7,700 full body x-ray scans
- 210,378 other radiologic studies
- 24,368 surgical procedures.
Like factories, hospitals are run along mechanistic lines, with lots of rules, regulations and routines. Notes Lawrence LeShan, PhD, in Cancer as a Turning Point:
|
When
you enter a hospital... you are immediately subject to a routine whose
effects is to make you into a passive, dependent, childlike person who
will not question or oppose authority. You can no longer decide what you
will wear or eat, or go anywhere alone (often not even to the
bathroom).
Strangers take complete authority over your life and destiny, order you to wake up, go to sleep... generally act as if you are a not-too-bright child and they are the adults. This infantilisation is, of course, simply comfort of the staff, not the patients, and is a product of the basic belief that people who are sick are like machines that are broken.” |
How to survive iatrogenic illness LeShan offers the following tips on How to Survive in a Hospital:
Have a friend or relative who can be your advocate. This person should be someone who is not afraid to make a fuss and ask difficult questions. You should ask:
- Who is the physician overall in charge of you. Make sure tat there is someone who has an overview of you and your problem.
- What is the diagnosis, and how certain of it is your physician?
- What is the usual course of the disease, both with and without therapy?
- What are the side effects of the therapy?
- What alternative exist?
iatrogenic illness and death
Do not let yourself be ignored if there is something that the physician should know. Recently, a patient was being evaluated in a large hospital…and the physician decided to use a dye test (IVP) for evaluating kidney function. The patient told the doctor that she was allergic to the dye. The physician did not listen to her and gave her the test anyway. The patient died. A simple but stubborn “No” would have saved her life.
Have your physician list all the medications you are supposed to get, at what times you get each, and what each ones look like. If a nurse or aide gives you a medicine that doesn’t fit your physician’s description, refuse it.
Find out what diet you will be on and whether you can have food brought in from the outside. The average hospital serves food that is neither appetizing nor nutritious.
You have the right to know the results of all tests made on you.
Leave the hospital to avoid iatrogenic illness
You can leave the hospital at any time. The hospital may request you to sign an against-medical-advice (AMA) form, but they can only request this and cannot hold you if you refuse. Incidentally, studies done on people who left hospitals against medical advice show that few later regret it, and few experience adverse effects.
Unauthorized medical treatments (except in clear life-or-death situations) constitute assault and battery. It does not matter whether the treatment was advisable or not, successful or not. Consent is the key. Do not allow surgeons to remove organs “because there might be trouble later... You can always have it removed later. You can’t have it put back. (See my other article on kiasu or 'preventive medicine')
If you ask too many questions, or decide against a procedure that the hospital think is right for you... the Department of psychiatry is called in to “adjust” you. Say politely, “I did not request your visit. I will not talk to you. I will refuse any bill you send me. Please go away.
Turn down tranquilizers to avoid iatrogenic illness
Sometimes, If you ask too many questions... the physician will prescribe tranquillizers. No one can prescribe anything to zonk out your brain. You must ask what is the name and purpose of every medication prescribed, and then you decide whether or not you want to take it. Above all, don’t be afraid to be difficult when something is wrong.
Surviving iatrogenic illness
In short, if you are in the hospital for the convenience of the staff, be a good patient. If you are there because you are sick, then do everything possible to retain as much control as you can over your own destiny.
“Bad patients” tend to survive longer and to respond better to medical intervention than do “good patients”. It’s not entirely the fault of doctors that hospitals are dangerous breeding grounds for iatrogenic illness. Most of them are highly stressed from overwork, because hospitals are overcrowded. So unless you really have to, don’t make life more difficult for them.
Dr Robert Medelsohn writes:
In short, if you are in the hospital for the convenience of the staff, be a good patient. If you are there because you are sick, then do everything possible to retain as much control as you can over your own destiny.
“Bad patients” tend to survive longer and to respond better to medical intervention than do “good patients”. It’s not entirely the fault of doctors that hospitals are dangerous breeding grounds for iatrogenic illness. Most of them are highly stressed from overwork, because hospitals are overcrowded. So unless you really have to, don’t make life more difficult for them.
Dr Robert Medelsohn writes:
|
A hospital is like a war. You should try your best to stay out of it.
For the amount of money the average hospital stay costs, you could spend an equal length of time at just about any resort in the world. And unless your condition required emergency treatment, your health might be better off if you spent the time and money at the resort. |
RELATED ARTICLES
|
|
Kiasu medicine - over-caution in preventive medicine
When NOT to consult a doctor?
Confessions of Dr Robert S Meddlesome
But isn't it scientific? How medical science is often unscientific
Iatrogenic illness: How to survive in a medical factory?
Drugged senseless - the ill-logic of pharmaceutical drugs
When ignorance is safer - the dangers of medical tests
No comments:
Post a Comment