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Things I've noticed while visiting the ICU

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Re: Things I've noticed while visiting the ICU

#131

Post by rscho »

neonate wrote: post #121
rscho wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd wager: not very differently. But not out of fear. The social isolation of old age is the same everywhere. Young people have their own lives to live.

> The social isolation of old age is the same everywhere That is certainly not true. Traditional societies and non-western societies have far different ways of relating to elders than we do, and even among western societies there are variations.

Well, yes I see what you mean. What I meant was: it's the same in the US and western Europe. But certainly if you go to more "old fashioned" places, the elderly usually live with the family and are taken care of. To be fair, this still happens even in "advanced" western societies. I seem to recall this also goes together with a lot of elderly abuse.

Re: Things I've noticed while visiting the ICU

#132

Post by QuercusMax »

tunap wrote: post #44
a_shovel wrote: post #21

I don't have much personal experience with hospitals, but there's a trend I've noticed across several articles now where the medical system is characterized by an unpredictable and frequent alternation between extreme competence and extreme incompetence. The author's dad was being seen by a variety of highly trained specialists all working to treat him, but "people need to sleep" seems to be a recent discovery in the…

>"people need to sleep" Sleep is almost impossible with regular check-ups... 30 min or 60 min, don't remember. Excepting the comatose and most medicated(maybe not?), a person's sleep cycle is unable to reach REM when a stranger approaches and fiddles on regular intervals. I would think monitoring from afar(sensors, cameras) would be more beneficial, but I was informed the liability factors preclude such remote monito…

Last time I was in the hospital (in 2016 with a broken arm) it was very difficult to sleep because the bed had some device that pokes you every so often to make sure you don't develop bedsores from lying too still.

This makes sense for someone who might be in there for weeks, but I was barely there overnight!

Re: Things I've noticed while visiting the ICU

#133

Post by Sevii »

questime wrote: post #5

It's politically toxic to discuss but a ton of money goes to keeping people not dead (not really alive either). You could give a lot more people medicare/medicaid if we let a 90 yr old with dementia/diatebetes/etc. pass with dignity.

Canada is actually moving in that direction with their medical assistance in dying laws.

Re: Things I've noticed while visiting the ICU

#134

Post by j-bos »

ncallaway wrote: post #123
j-bos wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally want my doctors to be amazing and very good. For now tests are a fair proxy, it's the 8 years that seem ridiculous, esp when looking at non US countries.

> For now tests a a fair proxy for that Is it? Is there a study demonstrating the correlation to pre med test scores to patient outcomes?

Personal intuition, feel free to dismiss.

Re: Things I've noticed while visiting the ICU

#135

Post by gowings97 »

rscho wrote: post #112
gowings97 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What percent of patients have a medical need to be woken up every few hours then?

You'd be surprised to see what happens to staff going against waking up patients all night. You get the "dangerous sloth" sticker on your forehead real quick on the morning grand rounds.

With all the focus on EHR and billing, they can't have all the machines taking vitals hooked up and in a ready only state thats sent to the nursing station?

This is the type of stuff I have a gripe with. Sinecure and fiefdoms of power.

Re: Things I've noticed while visiting the ICU

#136

Post by dang »

wellareyousure wrote: post #11
questime wrote: post #5

It's politically toxic to discuss but a ton of money goes to keeping people not dead (not really alive either). You could give a lot more people medicare/medicaid if we let a 90 yr old with dementia/diatebetes/etc. pass with dignity.

Yes, certainly people in medicine are aware. > we let a 90 yr old with dementia/diatebetes/etc. pass with dignity. Often it's a 4 week old baby. For every 1 sophisticated family member, there are 19 unsophisticated ones, who toss a weighted coin and, if it's heads, they decide they want their dying, non-responsive relative - possibly their baby, possibly their mom, etc. - to be kept alive at all costs. I don't know i…

Could you please stop creating accounts for every few comments you post? We ban accounts that do that. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

You needn't use your real name, of course, but for HN to be a community, users need some identity for other users to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

Re: Things I've noticed while visiting the ICU

#137

Post by ericmcer »

His observation that the ICU is full of the elderly reminded me of the Obamacare debates when I was younger.

I always felt like I was taking crazy pills when I would leave my conservative elder parents who hated the idea of universal healthcare, and go to my younger liberal friends who were all for it. It was such a clear case of peoples ideology running directly against their self-interest. Young people being against paying for old peoples healthcare (while the elderly control a much larger share of the wealth) made sense to me, old people wanting more reassurance that they would always have healthcare made sense, but the two groups essentially wanting to self-sabotage was always confusing.

Re: Things I've noticed while visiting the ICU

#138

Post by Mezzie »

notacoward wrote: post #34
Mezzie wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's terrible about it? I'm a younger (34) person with substantial healthcare needs (I have MS). Everything is always oriented towards the old, and I also pay taxes that are used to support them while getting nothing in return despite having similar needs.

> I also pay taxes Do you really get nothing ? And who is paying for whose care? You mention taxes, but they've probably been paying taxes even longer. And why do you think health care is a strict quid pro quo anyway? Some of us believe care should be allocated where it's needed, not where it's paid for. Put another way: why is it a problem that they are getting care? Isn't it that you aren't ? This doesn't have to b…

I wish we (Americans) had universal healthcare, but at this point I'm pretty jaded about that ever coming to pass. So I agree with you there, and your point about them having paid taxes is also a good one.

That said, we do care for the elderly because of their vulnerability but we then shit on younger disabled people. Old people can have assets, most younger disabled people can't, and younger disabled people can lose their benefits by getting married. SSA also applies different criteria for disability and makes it functionally impossible to get if you're young enough versus in your 50s or 60s.

I'm frustrated at being expected to extend infinite grace to the elderly when receiving very little/none, despite us being similarly vulnerable. I also dislike that in general our culture takes care of the elderly/gives them their dues without asking them to take up the corresponding responsibility. As a group, they care very little about the future.

After years fighting/voting for better healthcare, very little has been accomplished. So am I just supposed to suffer and accept I matter less than an old person? That's kind of against basic animal survival instinct. My country seems determined to view it as a quid pro quo, including the elderly.

Re: Things I've noticed while visiting the ICU

#139

Post by rscho »

gowings97 wrote: post #135
rscho wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd be surprised to see what happens to staff going against waking up patients all night. You get the "dangerous sloth" sticker on your forehead real quick on the morning grand rounds.

With all the focus on EHR and billing, they can't have all the machines taking vitals hooked up and in a ready only state thats sent to the nursing station? This is the type of stuff I have a gripe with. Sinecure and fiefdoms of power.

Silencing monitors is actually forbidden by law in many places. Staff is supposed to be near the patient at all times => monitors beeping. That's certainly a bad state of things, but not a "fiefdom of power". It's so ingrained in our education that most staff don't even think about it but would certainly agree if asked whether the patient would sleep better without it.

Re: Things I've noticed while visiting the ICU

#140

Post by crooked-v »

ericmcer wrote: post #137

His observation that the ICU is full of the elderly reminded me of the Obamacare debates when I was younger. I always felt like I was taking crazy pills when I would leave my conservative elder parents who hated the idea of universal healthcare, and go to my younger liberal friends who were all for it. It was such a clear case of peoples ideology running directly against their self-interest. Young people being agains…

Fox News & co have spent decades training their target demographic to hate and fear anything that Democrats even pretend to like. There's nothing particularly age-inherent about it other than said demographic being both wealthier and less educated and thus a better group to target with the associated nonsense grifting.
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