Word: patiently
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Doctors and laymen alike were shocked and outraged at an anonymous letter in the January 8th issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. In the letter, a resident physician wrote in, describing how he had been summoned to the bedside of a 20-year-old patient named Debbie, who was dying of ovarian cancer...
Officially, of course, the shortage has not really endangered people's lives. "Often the level of T.L.C. that a patient expects -- the back rub, the hand holding -- doesn't get done in today's intense environment," says Allan Anderson, president of Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan. "But I don't think there is any evidence that the quality of hospital care has deteriorated...
...same time, advances in medical technology have dramatically increased nurses' responsibilities. Consider the neurological intensive-care unit of Chicago's Cook County Hospital. Cocooned in a bewildering array of intravenous lines, tubes and machines, each patient is desperately ill; 30 nurses are required to monitor and care properly for a group of nine patients around the clock. "Things can change rapidly," explains Mary O'Flaherty, the unit's nurse coordinator. "One moment a patient's intracranial pressures, blood pressure and cerebral-profusion pressure can be fine. The next moment you can start hearing bells...
...define the professional nature of nurses more precisely and assign other people to positions where a nurse's professional and scientific background is not essential," says Dr. David Skinner, president of New York Hospital. It does not take a nursing degree, for example, to deliver a pill to a patient. Houston's M.D. Anderson Hospital sometimes uses medication technicians, not R.N.s, to dispense drugs to patients after nurses have verified the dose. Says Connie Curran, vice president for health-care management and patient services at the American Hospital Association (AHA) in Chicago: "Hospitals that are using registered nurses to answer...
Naturally, such a revamped job description means more responsibility -- and more respect. Nurses are often the first to spot trouble, make sense of a patient's confusing symptoms or suggest a needed change in treatment. Yet acting on such observations has traditionally been the physician's purview. R.N.s must become full-fledged members of the team and be expected to engage ! in the medical give-and-take about patients' well-being. That role is never in doubt on the AIDS ward at Sherman Oaks Community Hospital, where doctors and nurses find themselves depending on one another to battle the deadly...