Seek Insight
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Ask yourself this.
Does your organisation do things to, for or with patients?
Does it recognise the expertise patients, carers and staff hold in their daily lives and activities?
How does the organization hear the thoughts of these people?
A carer sitting with a loved one in a hospital ward does not experience that ward the same way staff do.
One woman, at a staff education session, spoke of assisting her husband’s ward-mates when she visited him. This included emptying their urine bottles during the long days she spent with her husband on an orthopaedic ward. The staff were horrified.
Her response was this.
“I am not stupid. Of course I washed my hands – possibly more carefully than you would. And I knew who needed their urine measured and recorded and where. I did that. I was there all day – 8am to 8pm. What else did I have to do with my day? And you are all so busy. It saved you having to do it.”
As a result of the discussion, the nurses undertook to be more aware of the role of the carers and to invite their involvement in the care of their loved one if that was what they and their loved one wanted. The nurses had not considered that an option until hearing the perspective of one carer.
