Hospitals are known to be a facility to visit when in immediate or extensive need of healthcare. They have been around for hundreds of years and advanced in both technology and the quality and type of services they offer. People that find themselves in need of urgent medical care, typically find themselves in an emergency room of a hospital.
Emergency rooms were established to provide people with urgent treatment for their injuries or conditions. Typically these are people that have are involved in a car accident or a mishap at work, during a sports game, or with faulty equipment. Doctors in the emergency room of a hospital work in an extremely fast paced environment around the clock, usually posting a large number of overtime hours. A shift for them may turn into 2 or 3 consecutive ones, especially when understaffed or if the number of patients coming in is increasing drastically. Sometimes though, the wait in an emergency room can take longer than expected due to these circumstances. This is accurate more so if the person has gone to the hospital in a private vehicle. Hospitals tend to give priority for treatment to emergency room patients that have been brought in via ambulance. Those who are taken to the hospital by a family member sometimes end up waiting an hour or more to receive stitches on a deep wound, or to be seen for a broken bone. The cases that usually see rapid treatment regardless of their transportation means, are those requiring immediate surgery. Television shows tend to depict emergency rooms as a hectic, poorly organized, and chaotic environment with tons of beeping machinery, the sound of defibrillators going off, and doctors screaming in frustration. Much to the surprise of people who have yet to visit one, this is not so at all. The shows just tend to portray a lot more drama and chaos than actually goes on behind the closed doors of the hospital. The environment itself is somewhat hectic due to the nature of having to provide quality care at a prompt and swift pace, and move along to the next patient. There usually is a sequence of steps a patient can expect when visiting an emergency room. If the patient shows up at the hospital by their own means, they must first report themselves to a front desk. The nurse behind the counter will ask for information such as the reason for being there, the name/address/phone number of the patient, their health insurance information, and how and when the condition was noticed. Then the patient will take a seat in a small to large hospital room which is known as the ER (emergency room) wait room. This room would consists of a bunch of chairs and maybe some TV’s, and other patients waiting for their care. After a short to long wait, they are let into an area of the ER where they will be sat down next to a nurse. The nurse will check the patient’s vital signs (eyes, ears, temperature, blood pressure, etc) and then go through the same questions all over again. This is not the end of telling the incident, they may find themselves repeating it several times. After the nurse is done, they will provide the patient with a wristband to identify them as a patient of the hospital and either walk them, push them in a wheelchair, or gurney towards the main area of the ER. And here the repeating of their condition/injury continues yet again with another nurse, who may ask you to change into a gown behind a curtain. After all this is said and done, the doctor will eventually come and see you where they will read your chart and still ask you the same questions, finally leading you to your care. Here the doctor will determine how to provide the best care possible to treat you, whether they need to take you to another hospital room for an x-rays, an MRI, etc.., surgical room, or do so on the spot. As one can see, there is a journey once you’ve set your foot in the door. The only way to bypass some steps is if a patient is brought in an ambulance, where they typically skip the front desk and wait room. The condition of the patient is usually provided to the hospital through the paramedics especially if the patient is unable to do so. This is basically how the ER can typically function. Needless to say, the emergency room in a hospital is probably the busiest area of the hospital and accounts for much of the stress faced by the staff in their essential positions
Hospitals tend to gain a name for themselves for providing exceptional care in one field. For example, certain hospitals are known as the ones with the best emergency room; this could be rated meaning the quality of the care provided or the short wait time. Others are known as the hospital providing the best care in the delivery room for pregnant mothers during labor. Along with these two, certain hospitals can also be the “best” surgeries, and even then, claim to the best at a certain type of surgery. For example, you can have 3 hospitals that are known to be the best for surgical care, but each one has its own focus. One hospital could be for heart surgery, while the others can focus on brain surgery, and transplant surgery. These things are no secret that a person would have to learn by joining some special club or organization. This information is usually well advertised by the hospitals themselves or even in articles and reports that are listed in magazines, newspapers, or news stories. Hospitals take great pride in their work and how well they provide care to their patients so they would want prospective patients to know that. This will give an invaluable amount of knowledge to a person when they need to seek care in the future. Of course the hospital or hospitals that a patient can attend are limited by their health insurance, it still can help them pick one from the choices that are narrowed down for them already.
There are many different types of hospitals and are owned and ran by different organizations. There are hospitals that are owned by universities, churches, and others. Usually the ones owned by universities are those that provide excellent medical program offerings for their students. The graduates will most likely complete their residency in these hospitals once they are ready to do so. Certain cities and groups of doctors also own and run hospitals. The government also has many hospitals across the country that provide care to specific people. The United States Department of Veterans Affairs owns and operates hospitals providing care for veterans of war. They provide quality healthcare for veterans dating as far back as World War II that are still alive, and their largest number from the Vietnam War. Lately the number of patients in these medical facilities is on the rise due to the War on Terror. Because of the amount of people they have to serve, these hospitals exist in abundance throughout the nation. Some states can see two to three within different areas of the state depending on its size, for convenience to their patients. Prior to the recent war the VA hospitals saw a steady number of patients coming in and out of them for treatment. However, now with the current war in its 7th year, those numbers have seen a sharp increase. Perhaps this will also require that the existing medical facilities are expanded, or that new hospitals are constructed to meet that demand. The services that are provided in these places are just like those anywhere else, the only prerequisite is that the patient must be a veteran of war. The equipment in these hospitals is as advanced and up to date, the doctors are as adequately qualified as a doctor in a privately owned facility.
Communities see a huge plus side to having a great medical facility in their remote area for the sake of having the accessibility to excellent health care. Aside from this, there are other ways in which a hospital can benefit the area that its in. One of these ways is by boosting their economy greatly with the jobs it provides. Careers in a hospital can vary greatly because of its vast possibilities due to the departments the institution houses. The most obvious of those jobs is for doctors. A hospital requires doctors in all fields, which provides the job hunting ones with an easier search than that of looking to join a smaller practice. Medical facilities need general doctors, pediatricians, gynecologists, cardiologists, neurological surgeons, and podiatrists, to name a few. Depending on the size of each department, that number of doctors it employs will determine the job openings. The next obvious job in a hospital is nurses, which also have specific kinds and duties. There are there ER nurses which tend to the emergency room, OR nurses that assist surgeons in the operating rooms, OB nurses that help in the delivery rooms. There are nurses for every department of care in a hospital, and each has a strong knowledge and focus of the field they are working in, just as the doctor they are assisting. Moving along from the obvious jobs, there are workers for special needs in the hospital, which can vary from physical therapists to social workers and some psychiatrists. Physical therapists in hospital are there to help patients post surgery/injury to rehabilitate. Through strong emotional coaching and physical activity they strive to bring a patient back to their everyday form prior to their incident. Sometimes, after they work with them in the hospital they provide additional care in their home or separate facility. Social workers may seem rare to find in this type of institution but that’s not the case at all. The staff in a hospital are sometimes presented with cases that involve children’s injuries, due to the neglect or direct harm of a parent. This is when the doctor and staff can determine if some sort of intervention is necessary. If so, they will contact the social worker that will come in and speak to the child and/or parents, and sometimes put the child in safer hands for the time being if the case needs to proceed. These things can vary from a child that’s a victim of a drunk driving crash because the parent was drunk, to a child that comes in bruised with broken ribs due to abuse at home. Other instances could be starvation, neglect of injury or condition, or ingestion of drugs or alcohol under supervision of a parent. The hospital also has psychiatrists on hand, which may not seem like the typical type of setting for these doctors. Usually you think of a psychiatrist in an office that resembles more of a home with a long leather couch a person lays on their back, and a box of tissues on a nearby send table. The truth is medical facilities require the services of psychiatrists on a regular basis. These doctors can be called to speak to and help a patient cope during a tough time. Such instances can be times when a baby is still born, or a pregnancy is lost. Others can include patients dealing with an unexpected amputation of a limb. The most common times they are provided is when a life is lost, and the family needs someone immediate to turn to for support aside from themselves. Psychiatrists are also there to provide an extra level of comfort for young patients of a hospital, since their attendance in such a facility alone can be traumatic. They provide a much needed level of service to a medical facility and its patients.
The hospitals of course house the “behind the scenes” jobs such as the staff in its cafeteria, the janitorial staff that keep the place immaculately clean for your health and safety, and the security guards that keep its patients safe. There are many more jobs like these in the other areas of hospitals, and all are equally as important for the facility to run properly and everything function in harmony. Let’s face it, if these places faced any setback it could possibly be chaotic. This should give people a little more insight into the different types of hospitals there are, the jobs they provide, and how they are ran