Friday ramblings

About the Author

Richard Meyer is a passionate Internet DTC marketer with over 15 years of progressive experience in consumer marketing who`s worked on top pharmaceutical brands like Cialis, Prozac and Sarafem, as well as two years with Medtronic Diabetes. He is currently consulting for his own company, Online Strategic Solutions, and writes a DTC column for PM 360 magazine and blogs for Eye for Pharma in addition to his own blog, World of DTC Marketing.

One thing I learned while marketing supplements in the late 90’s (when the supplement market was over $1 billion) was people will take anything that promises good health in a bottle, often to compensate for bad habits. While watching a special on Woodstock on the History Channel, I was struck by how many musicians, now that they are a lot older, are overweight and really big. Since Boomers represent such a huge part of our population, I thought that this may be the reason that America is reported as so overweight. There comes a time when it takes 6 weeks to take off 10 pounds, and then it seems to take just 2 days to gain it all back.

Surgery

Last Friday I had surgery on my shoulder to fix a torn tendon. My surgery was at 2PM and I had to report to Thousand Oaks Surgical Hospital at 12PM. My instructions were not to eat or drink anything after midnight, so going 12 hours without water or food was no treat.

I was taken back to the pre-op room a little after 12, where a nurse hooked up an IV and took my vital signs. She then said that the anesthesiologist would be in to see me soon. Two and a half hours later, I had to go to the bathroom and there was not a nurse to be found anywhere to take my IV bags off the wall so i could move, which meant my wife had to go find an IV pole and transfer the bags herself.

Hooked up and ready to go

Finally the OR nurse and anesthesiologist came back to get information and I was asked to walk into the OR. Since I was able to keep my sneakers and socks on it wasn’t a big deal, I guess, but still strange. In the OR, the table was more like a recliner and it was comfortable while the OR nurse removed my sneakers. The anesthesiologist quickly gave me some Seconal “to help me relax” and quickly put an oxygen mask over my head. When I asked him why he didn’t use Versed he just said, “I prefer Seconal”. That’s all I remember until I woke up in recovery.

It was 6PM when I woke up in recovery shivering from the effect of the anesthesia. I saw a big clock on the wall and I guess I fell back a sleep a couple of times because it soon was 7PM. I was the last person in the recovery area and before I could settle down and get warn the nurse was bringing a wheel chair and telling my wife where to pick me up. I soon learned that she would go home as soon as I was gone so I could see why she was rushing to get me out. Believe me at night here in Southern California it gets real cold this time of year and I was still shivering.

So as a participant in the health care system, I can tell you first hand some of what could be done to improve the patient experience:

1. Overcommunicate with the patient: People who are there for surgery are scared and want to know what is going to happen and when. It’s better to stop in every few minutes to check on the IV and ask if things are OK rather than to leave patients alone for 2 hours.

2. Doctors could learn better beside manners: The anesthesiologist seemed both disconnected and uncaring when I talked to him in pre-op and in the OR. I know I am patient nobody, but would it hurt to let me know when you are going to start the propofol to knock me out? I had my other shoulder repaired in Indiana 5 years ago, and the anesthesiologist let me know exactly what was going to happen and when. As you get propofol, first you get really dizzy and then you’re in another dimension.

3. Nurses are human too: The hospital talks about a patient to nurse ratio of 4:1 and improved care. I would have like to have had a least another half-hour in recovery to get warm and stop the shivers but it seemed to be more important to “get me out” so she could go home.

After it was all over, the hospital called to ask for my experience rating and I expressed my thoughts, to which the survey-taker seemed taken back. I am a consumer of health care and if I had a choice I probably would not go back to Thousand Oaks Surgical Hospital. It’s the little things…