European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - January 4, 1986, Darmstadt, Hesse Saturday january 4, 1966 the stars and stripes Page 17cutting through Hospital red tape by Olive Evans new York Tim t hey get things done. They Cut through Hospital red Tapa and gel an air Condellone fixed quickly or they improve communication Between a patient and a doctor they Are also Good Al sitting Down and listening to anxiety Ridden sick people. Patient representatives Are a growing Breed now found in 3,300 of the nation s hospitals with Competition hospitals Are going to have to stay close to shelf customers said William h. Buckley the director of Hie office of patient care representatives at the 1, too bed Massachusetts general Hospital in Boston. We can no longer be Cavalier that these Are sick people who Are just going to come to us he said. We have to ask where can we be doing a belter trying to make the Hospital experience As efficient and pleasant As possible is the patient representative s first priority in the View of Ruth Ravsch the director of he patient representative department Al mount Sinai medical Center. The second she said is to Lead Back to the system where the system is not being responsive to be a catalyst for Leta Marcher a West Cheater writer who recently had three monthlong slays at mount Sinai uttered the patient s perspective just knowing that they re there reassures you that you Are not up against the Hospital bureaucracy alone patient representatives usually salaried employees who Are sometimes assisted by volunteers differ rom most other Hospital staff members in that they Are no caretakers. Although physicians nurses end even social workers spend Lime with a patient Buckley said there Are limes when a problem comes up that they cannot solve. The patient needs someone who can listen who will treat questions in but patients can be educated Buckley pointed out about such things As gelling a doctor to answer questions. We give them some coaching on How to keep the doctor in the room he said. Lots of patients eel intimidated by doctors but i feel you can feel intimidated and still gel the answers you want. You have a right to new York Law requires that a patients Bill of rights be posted in Ell Hospital sin the state and patients rights Are integral to the work of the patient representative. This a a Long Way from the Days of the Leaky Radiator complaints when Anne Alexis Cote started Al new York Hospital 15 years ago she is now the director of patient services there. Then i was it she said. To now have four full time paid representatives. There was resentment by the staff then no one understood. Now we Are part of the Hospital fabric. We have moved into patients rights and Quality Al Cote and her staff even get involved in decisions about Der do not resuscitate orders. The controversy is tied to the question of whether one has the right to die with dignity. Do we know what the pal enl wanted Cote asked. Is there a living will who has Power of attorney whet family member has been consistently Here those responsible for the patient s treatment May agree that the situation is irreversible she explained but then a family member who has not been a regular visitor autos and wants every Lhing done to save aunt the Mient representative says Well go along with what the patient wants Cote said. We connect them with physician nurse and social worker to help them the Job is not always so dramatic. Complaints about cold food come up or gelling visiting hours stretched to accommodate someone who lives far away getting an anxious patient s a Ray moved up on the schedule or listening to chronic complaints that simply express anger at being 111, although recurring or oblast in one department can reveal Hospital trouble spots several patient representatives said that nurses and other stall members offer Little resistance to Ihler work in act nurses Are he source of Many problem referrals. Typically a head nurse wll say i have a patient who is complaining about everything you d better have someone talk to we have to get the support of the staff said sister Margaret Kennelly who supervises three full time and 10 Volunteer patient representatives Al is. Vincent s Hospital in Greenwich Village we have to Lal the staff know thai we understand their problems and the pressures they Are working patient representatives at St Vincent s Are assigned consistently to the same floor she said to maintain a relationship with the As sister Margaret went on her rounds it was hard to say who was happier to see her patients or staff members. A woman on a restricted diet because she was to have a test had Only one complaint i wish i could eat. I m starving but sister Margaret had another thought we have to see that someone notifies your husband about the lest so he won t come in and find you not emotions linked to course of diseases by Daniel Goleman new York times evidence appears to be mounting of specific links Between people s emotions the body s immune defences and the course of serious diseases. Some researchers Are concluding that breast cancer patients Lor example who Are openly upset and show a fighting spirit to going to conquer this in Angl marshal stranger immune defences against the spread of the disease and Are More Likely to survive than in cts who suffer with Quiel slow Clem. Much controversy still surrounds the research on the relationship Between emotions and human disease. Some medical experts con Lune to question just How important it is. Herbert Spector a at the National institutes of health says the ancients knew that the Allenl s attitude was very important to his recovery. But modern Medicine wrote ii off As but he adds the new research makes it Clear. Attitudes can Mailer. The locus now should be on discovering the mechanisms involved tha question is what Fetha biochemistry of All this unit to twin brain activity and immune Bombeck a y husband has been trying to Leach our children to speak thermostat for years. They say the younger you Start to teach them a foreign language the faster they team. This has not been the Case Rush did not come easy for them neither did thermostat is one of the last of the foreign languages to be taught to children. It comes just after Shang up that phone and shut the note to Vafenis please do not proceed to thermostat until " ". Response had been shown in previous work with animals but the implications of animal research for human emotions has often been ambiguous. The new findings Are the first to establish not just associations Between such emotions and the course of disease but also changes in the immune system thai appear to link the two. These new studies suggest that emotions such As anxiety apathy and depression May have a significant effect on immune system factors such As the natural killer cells hat fight cancer. The studies Point to links Between the emotions and such diseases As flu colds and genital herpes in addition to cancer. Efforts to prove the emotion disease link have gained recent momentum from several important findings. Tha Brit cancer tudy reported in the lancet journal by Kino s College Hospital in London is regarded by Many As particularly significant. In it researchers found a Strong relationship Between Ali eur emotional response three months after a Mastectomy in which the entire breast is removed and their Rale of survival 10 years later. The emotions were measured soon after the diagnoses were made. Just Attar the women had had surgery and All were in Early stages of the disease. Of the St women who were followed for the full length of the study 10 had an initial reaction to Mastectomy in which they denied that they acl Yally had had cancer Many of them rationalized tha operation As a preventive measure. Half of these women were a Lull alive after 10 years. Another f 0 women showing what the researchers found to be a fighting spirit reacted to the knowledge that they had breast cancer with the attitude that they would take every step possible to Bailie the disease. This group had the highest survival rate after 10 years with 7 of the 10 still alive. Tha poorest Overall survival Rule was among women who reacted with a stole acceptance of Ihler disease showing no signs of distress and among those who reacted with feelings of hopelessness As though there were nothing further to do once the diagnosis was made. 01 the 32 stoics. 24 were dead after 10 years of the 5 who Felt hopeless tour had died. While the scientists Point out that the research should to interpreted with caution because of the Small number of women studied they propose thai mental attitudes should be included in reckoning the medical prognosis of women with breast cancer. Whether menial attitudes can be changed and whether such change improves the report says Are questions worthy of further Vafenis ease thaw Are speaking shut the door fluently tree Are several methods of teaching thermos Tat " some parents use the Berlitz concept. They put a Ord less beneath he pillows of children tha a thermostat controls the Furnace in the Toor is open the bad cold air wants to come in and Llhee fur Nace 1 ies very hard to heat the outdoors. God never meant for a Furnace to heat America or he would never have invented one of the first phrases a child learns about ther Mostal is my room is my room is cold voluntarily triggers his motor activity. He will proceed to the thermostat and with nimble precision move the thermostat dial to 82 degrees by sheer coincidence. The boiling Point of his father this is followed by my room is however a strange phenomenon occurs. Instead of turning the thermostat Back your child will open a window. He needs work in the language. Our children were slow. We spent a year and a half on How do you spell reliefs we at Eri a two years on daddy is not a Rich Man and we can no longer afford three it was t until last week when we took them on a Field Frap to the mater that they seemed to comprehend what we were talking about. We showed hem How the Little dials twirled around on the meter and How we were charged Lor each Little twirl. They watched our lips closely As we formed the word one of them said. Walt a minute. Are you telling us thai the colder it gets outside the harder the Furnace has to work to keep it warm inside we nodded happily. --.-i, and every time it Clicks on it souls Money we jumped up and Down exc edly. Why did t you say so my husband smiled. Do a a think we can Progress to thank you i Hale to push pm be Are they re ready i said. Mabom Eck is c vacation. Hera is a repeat of one of her favorite Coli mrs. To a gelt Tom Sendl Colp
