Interviewing a patient at hospital to develope personal communication skills and understanding of hospital proccedures.
The purpose of visiting a hospital was to find out how a hospital is run and the experiences of patients who were receiving treatment there. Interviewing a patient gave me the opportunity to develop my own communication skills. It also allowed me to discover the pros and cons of healthcare in a hospital and assess how I would treat patients in the future as a doctor.
I interviewed a 29 year old man, NM, who works as an international sales manager. His job involves lots of travelling to various countries such as Scandinavia and Asia so he told me he enjoyed it but it is tiring. He is single and lives alone. He was admitted in hospital because he was suffering from an aneurism in the brain and has been in hospital for 3 weeks. He has been in hospital before to have an operation on his sinuses but the experience was entirely different as he was allowed to go home after a few days. He was not too sure about when he will be allowed to go home but has been told that it may vary between 2 days and 2 weeks after the operation. This was the first time that he was not able to do anything and had to lie flat most of the time. He found the lack of independence frustrating.
He discussed the weeks leading up to being admitted into hospital. The first time he felt pains was when he was using the cross trainer in the gym. He felt light headed and sick. He was sweating a lot and felt stiffness in his shoulders. The gym attendant suggested that he felt pains because he hadn’t eaten for a long while and gave him some glucose tablets. He still felt sick after some time and his mother was called to the gym. His mother decided that an ambulance should be called and he was taken to Hemel Hampstead Hospital. He remained at A & E for 6 hours in which time his blood sugar level, blood pressure and heart rate were monitored and he was also given injections. Unfortunately, they could not identify what was wrong and sent him home after giving painkillers. The next day he went to see his GP who requested several tests to be carried out. The GP thought it could be acute viral infection. Therefore NM took 2 weeks off work. He suffered from the same symptoms again. He had gone to hospital several times because of the pain. After being at home for 2 weeks he felt a wave of pain like pins and needles on the whole of the left side of his body, even his tongue felt numb. He lost use of his left leg and started to stumble and lose his balance. He rang NHS direct and spent 3 hours in hospital and then was advised him to go home and see a neurologist about his symptoms.
