No matter what country you visit, when you need to go into the hospital, it is important to understand how it operates and what level of care your local hospital is capable of providing. Here are a few tips to help you investigate your local hospital.
Many hospitals publish patient kits, sometimes referred to as hospital information packets. In these packets, you will be able to get some general information about the facility, such as what types of procedures are commonly performed there, any type of special post-operative facilities are present, the language services that are available, as well as any ongoing care programs that are offered through the hospital.
You can also get an idea of how the hospital administration is configured. This can be very helpful if you find yourself having to wade through a lot of red tape in order to get to someone who can help you with any situation that may arise during your stay. You can also quickly see how many hospital beds the facility have, if there is a hospital pharmacy on the premises and how the current hospital rating that the institution has been granted by your state or local province. All this information can be very helpful to you during and after your stay no matter where you are in the world.
Another critical piece of information is how the hospital nursing staff is put together. Does the facility have an adequate number of nurses on duty around the clock? Are there bi-lingual nurses on staff? This can be a real concern for two reasons. First, nurses are the ones who will be most closely monitoring you during your stay. A hospital that expects its nurses to juggle a larger number of patients, while still keeping up the patient charts and finding time to input all the data into a common database, may be telling of the hospital’s priorities. If you find that nurses are routinely asked to take care of more than seven or so patients during a shift, you may want to consider going to a different health care facility.
Second, is the staff heavier on registered nurses, who are able to perform more medical procedures or is the staff made up more of licensed practical nurses, who are somewhat more limited in the care they can provide? Making sure that the scheduling is done in such a manner will ensure there is a sufficient number of persons carrying both sets of credentials and that the hospital will provide quality patient care.
Retrieval of Records
An organization can be tested by simply seeing how quickly a nurse or doctor can retrieve hospital records. If the wait seems to be out of line with the information requested, chances are that there are some communication issues somewhere along the line. Computer technology these days makes information retrieval fairly easy. Pulling records should be just as easily accomplished.
Security
Hospital security is another major factor. A sad fact of our times is that thefts and other crimes are committed in hospitals, most often by persons who wander in and off the street. What type of security does your hospital provide? Can you have a reasonable degree of trust that you will not find yourself the victim of theft while you are recovering from surgery?
Working Environment
When it comes to hospital jobs, none of them are easy and many of them can be thankless. A sure sign that the hospital is operating well is when the employees speak well of their working environment. You know that if a nurse takes great pride in the way his or her floor is ran and has a great deal of confidence in those who act as charge nurses or floor administrators, that there is something good going on at the hospital. By the same token, if you see the nursing staff treating the cleaning staff with respect and vice versa, you know that the focus is more on getting the job done and less on any politics in the workplace. The demeanor and attitude of those who work there every day will tell you a great deal. Learn more about your local hospital and make your visit a more enjoyable visit.
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