Trapped under Ice

I have been asked to start a new project at the hospital........ ive been asked to run a discharge area. This means that any patients who have been told they can go home will come to me and sit and wait for their tablets or transport to pick them up. The reason ive been asked to do this is because there is a lack of beds in the hospital and alot of patients coming in each day that need bedding. I am also a bed manger so i understand the frustrations of needing to give a patient a bed but it is impossible because the wards are full and the beds we could use are being used by patients who are waiting for their tablets or waiting to get picked up..... hence the discharge area has been set up. The stuip thing is a couple of years ago the hospital decided to close the discharge area because it wasnt being used but now the hospital is busy they have decided they need it again.

Since running this area i have come across many areas of frustration which i wish i had some way of changing but trying to change something in a place as big and busy as the hospital is like trying to free yourself when your trapped under ice....... its impossible.
Many patients who have come down to me have been upset they have been moved from a ward that they know and cant understand why they cant stay there untill they go home... but its impossible to try and explain the only reason we moved you was to free up your bed. Well i cant tell patients that, its impossible. I would love to talk about more of my frustrations but its abit inappropriate and i could go on and on.

I would love to run a hospital one day. However i would run it my way with no government involvement or say about anything. I would treat each patient as an individual and i would put the money where its needed and i would ignore all government targets and just make sure each patient was treated with dignity and respect. They would not be discharged untill they were happy and pain free and knew exactly what was wrong with them and what they could do to help themselves. I would make sure that all familys were updated everyday and knew exactly what was going on. If i knew patients were due to be discharged i would organise it a few days before so as soon as the docter said they could go home, they would have all the bits they needed to go straight home instead of waiting around all day. I would make sure nurses had time to nurse, docters had time to spend with each patient and all staff were happy in their job because they ahd time to do it.
As long as patients and their familys were treated as indivduals with care respect and dignity and knew what was going on i would be happy.

However, we can all live in a dream world because as i say, trying to change anything would be like trying to free yourself if you got trapped under ice.