Each patient counts

Each patient counts at the Geriatric Surgical Care Rehabilitation Services of Boston's Lemuel Shattuck Hospital. Fulfilling that ideal at Shattuck Hospital is problematical. Geriatric Surgical Care Rehabilitation Services patients not able to get out of bed have no telephones. It's 2007 not 1950. Isolating patients is costly. Isolating patients keeps families and friends out of the loop. Recovery is longer. Hospital stays are longer. Nursing department resources are taxed in fielding telephone calls from families and friends trying to keep in touch with patients. Patients' telephones keep patients in touch with families and friends advocating for patients care. Signal interference create battlefield conditions, dropouts, garbling and warbling with cellphones' signals and cordless telephones' signals. Wallwired landline telephones are needed bedside for Geriatric Surgical Care Rehabilitation Services patients at Boston's Lemuel Shattuck Hospital.

For example, an iatrogenic skin infection developed in a patient. The hospital acquired infection had not been attended to early on and family and friends were unable to keep in touch by telephone conveniently. Not having a working bedside telephone keep family and friends at too long an arms reach from advocating for more attentive care for the hospital acquired infection and then having a secondary infection checked out that developed.

A state of learned helplessness develops in the Geriatric Surgical Care Rehabilitation Services patients at Boston's Lemuel Shattuck Hospital. Not only the patients. The learned helplessness is evident among the frontline staff and hospital leadership. Weeks have gone by with the telephone communications difficulties unresolved, the leadership unable to fix communications at LSH. There's no board of trustees. No advisory group of stakeholders has been available to look into hospital communications difficulties.