Lessons Learned from Being a Patient Advocate
It was a terrible job
Some of you may not know that I worked for patient experience after I was a clinical bioethics fellow. Patient experience is basically the customer service branch of the hospital, so we dealt with all kinds of complaints ranging from lost property to parking. However, when I was there at the height of COVID, our main job was to enforce the visitation policy. Essentially, I was just telling people they couldn’t visit their loved ones.
Yes, it was as bad as you imagine.
I can’t even remember how many times I was at the receiving end of verbal abuse. I even got recorded while trying to tell an entire family of thirteen people, half of which formed a semi-circle around me in the lobby, that only two of them could go up. It was really bad.
And while I did learn a lot about how the hospital operates, I almost regret doing it.
Here are some lessons I learned during that difficult time in my life:
I enjoy teaching way more than doing anything else. I was meant to be a teacher.
People who are angry in the hospital are often angry at the situation, but they will lash out at hospital employees. Sometimes hospital employees will respond in kind. I don't think either is appropriate, but I'd say the latter is even less appropriate since patients and/or visitors are going through a very difficult time in their lives.
The correct response to suffering is compassion.
Whether or not they ask for it, almost everyone wants special treatment for themself and their loved ones. Hospital policy be damned.
Some people are successful in getting that special treatment. I don't like it when this happens because it's unfair to others. The harder people push for special treatment, the harder I want to push back. In cases where I do give in, I get upset with myself for not being strong enough.
It's not the visitor's job to be concerned with hospital policy. Their responsibility is to be a good support person for the patient. Rather, it's the job of hospital leadership to worry about policy, and it's the job of the employees to enforce said policy. Sometimes this will lead to a conflict of duties. Sometimes the visitors have to do what the visitors have to do, and the employees have to do what the employees have to do.
Here's a tip: do not bring important items to the hospital unless you have to. Anything that can be lost in a hospital will be lost in a hospital. The most common lost items include dentures, phones, and hearing aids. While I was working there, a patient lost his fake eye.
Patient advocates are asked to have difficult conversations with patients and visitors that other hospital employees don't want to have. We're asked to enforce policy, tell family to stop calling, tell people to stop acting belligerent, etc. Once I had to have an uncomfortable conversation with a visitor who had urinated on the seat in the patient's room. Essentially, the nurse wanted me to set boundaries with the visitor because it was unfair for the nurse to have to take care of both the visitor and the patient.
It's more emotionally painful to tell someone no if they're polite about it. I once had to tell a new mother that she couldn't see her 4-day-old baby. She received it well. It broke my heart, though.
I think it's insulting that the job required me to clock in. It gave me unnecessary stress. I remember getting angry at a flock of geese that were blocking the road on my way to work.