Evening Herald Deaths

Hospitals deny death!

Our six patients in coronary care waiting for their treatments. They are attached to this note and heart monitors to record their heart rhythm and rate. These observations are possible both in their rooms and via the monitor to the central station of our nurse. At one point, there are moderate levels of alarms to warn us of the rhythms of non-critical and then there are the fast, urgent, must answer now types of alarms that announce the fatal arrhythmia must be treated immediately or death will ensue.

It is a stressful work environment and constant supervision and must be maintained by the monitors, there is the care of patients going to deal with sudden chest pain center may be a sign of an acute heart attack to simple task, but necessary, to take a weakened patient to the shower and toilet. The more often now, we fulfill the task of the educator to the purchaser of a new internal heart defibrillator wondered with horror how he will manage if the gadget in his chest artificial off when it should not . We give details of where he can get help, now that he has something alien in her chest. The work of a nurse becomes more complicated as technology advances and there is no reason to think it will stop any time soon.

Once the assessment is made of his patients, there is a mad panic to transfer one or two patients in the general service as there are two others waiting in an emergency. The voice on the phone said there was no space left carrier and we can not wait while you drink your cup of cold tea. I bang the phone down, turn around and it is the patient at the top of the crash cart out of breath and grab the bag vomit everywhere. As noted in the bed still warm from the last incumbent, we begin our treatment.

Maybe I'm too old, but there are no more happy faces at work. The increasing number of patients so they can be stressed, their relatives reported by the complete medicalization of life and the staff carried by the endless cost-cutting by their overzealous managers. The rapid pace of work is motivated by greed and mistaken belief that the old can simply continue to live. For aging does not want to die, and the medical system is too willing to comply with the prolongation of life. Why the old man who was wondering how to deal with defibrillator now firmly and forever in the chest agree to have inserted in his body very fragile age 85? His fatal arrhythmia is now denied him, because his defibrillator shock of any chance encounter with death.

But why should we expect the old man to go without any chance of more years? Throughout our lives materialists, we have learned to believe that a long life is desirable and possible and that we must do everything we can to get more decades of life. The mantra of how to live a long life is still "Top of the Pops.

Unfortunately, the acceptance of death is not found!

Ironically, if we were to embrace the presence of death we can all learn to live really. Since the birth, death must be prepared, not avoidance. There is no learning to die in our consumerist culture, where reality and death have no place and the endless search continues for immortality or at least some form of after life impossible.

It is not surprising that the old man with the defibrillator that now reside in his frail chest took the option of a few more years, even if it means sitting in a nursing home awaits his death deferred. Where is the public debate on the use of these technologies are increasingly used on the frail and the elderly?

Back on cardiac unit of Cent.