One of the most tightly controlled systems is the medical field. There are so many protocols and procedures, ensuring that medical practitioners just don’t make decisions off the bat. Decisions that could be the difference between the life and death of a patient. That’s why before a decision is made, there have to be a number of people who will sign off on it, no matter how impromptu it is.
For this reason, nurses can’t even attempt to treat patients without getting the okay from a doctor. It doesn’t matter if the nurse also knows a thing or two about being a doctor. As long as an actual doctor doesn’t suggest it, doing it could lead to her losing her license. That’s how tightly controlled it can be.
But then, can there be a time when these protocols and policies take more lives than save them? There was a time here in Nigeria when hospitals refused to treat victims of gunshot injuries without a police report. You could be a victim of an armed robbery and in the process, you got shot. However, none of that would matter to the hospital without the police report because they won’t even treat you.
Tell me, how will someone who is bleeding from a gaping hole in their body be able to go to the police station to get a report? This is exactly what many people suffered back in the day and a lot of lives were lost needlessly. The reason for this was that they assumed that a crime had to have been committed for someone to be shot. However, with no way of telling a victim from a perpetrator, everyone who came with a gunshot wound had to be treated like a criminal. And without a police report, hospitals were barred from treating them.
However, our lawmakers soon realized how barbaric such a system was and they changed it. Now, all gunshot wounds are treated as soon as they get them, but the hospital is required to report them to the police at once. Failure to report it is what would be considered a crime, not the actual treatment of the patient. That’s how it should be.
There are so many rules and policies that are put in place in the medical field and when you think about it, they could all just be for the benefit of the patients. But then, is that really the case? The more you look at it, the less sense it makes. There is a reason several hoops have to be jumped through before a major decision can be made. There’s a reason a surgery has to be planned out and set days ahead, if not weeks. There’s a reason a doctor just can’t decide to cut open a person just because they think it will help them heal.
There’s a reason for all that, and it’s not just to protect the patients. It’s to protect the hospital as well. The worst thing that can happen to a hospital is having a rowdy house. Imagine having a doctor just run a treatment without being sure that’s the right one, it could lead to loss of life and that would open up the hospital for suits. It doesn’t matter if the doctor was right, going about it the wrong way could just as well get their license revoked. That’s how tightly controlled it is.
Although, in my country, we still have many hospitals that don’t seem to care about all that. We still have lax doctors who don’t seem to care about the well-being of their patients. It’s a painful world, and we have a scary medical system. But then, what can we do? Try to make sure you don’t fall sick. That’s your surest bet.
So help us, God.
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