Charlie Rose

Paul Radinsky  07/31/2008 05:19 AM Report

How do you live with the last name Wrong? Without even opening his mouth he's already wrong. Of course Charlie showed no sense of humor by not asking him about his name. Only on PBS and NPR do you have interviewers who act like they're from another planet with absolutely no concept of humor.

Terry Wrong  06/24/2008 06:09 PM Report

Dr. Greene should be pleased to know that if he watches the series Hopkins he will see nurses and hear from them.

Ferdinand Gajewski  06/24/2008 06:06 PM Report

Why don't you, Mr. Charlie Rose, think about allowing posters to divide their utterances into paragraphs? This thread, for example, has some very long and promising posts, but who has time to struggle with a mass of words?

ann tsoi  06/24/2008 04:29 PM Report

not to be published please. thank you.

Dear Mr. Rose:

May I feedback on the ‘Hopkins hospital documentary’ by Mr. Terrance Wrong.

Imagine how one would compare and contrast as i worked at large teaching hospitals too.

Smash Hits as usual. Thank you for the interview show and your concerns about the current hospital hospital systems and healthcare.

I watched only the clip on your show last night, and had to pinch my nose, 'sad sad American hospital' !! the old bottle was changed with new wine and certainly not the best. It may be good fun to compare with any established European hospital institution or a Chinese 'elite' (sic!! about such class system) university hospital, Mr. Rose.

What was shown in the H. documentary:

1) nothing short of emergencies all around: around patients, around family members; even the hospital staff’s own personal problems on the show. Very true nowadays. Worker’s own life enmeshed into work place, how disconcerting. What about discipline, what about professional demeanors?

2) in 1975, I worked for one month at the National Hospital for Nervous Diseases at Queen’s Square, England when I was a young nurse grad, when they already had CT, MRI.

I was a night shift worker and never got to see the chief, a professor surgeon, but lectures were delivered by Mr. Firth, a most charming surgeon who was down to earth and performed excellent neuron-surgery and therefore very popular among staff.

My point is I saw the structure of a top team though I was a new staff at the low level. I felt the calmness and serenity about the hospital, it was overwhelming reassurance that things would not go wrong 90% of the time.

nowadays here 50% of things go wrong every shift, basic support system is dismantled by the overall system and everyday it has to be pulled together by every licensed nurse or doctor--- as i see it, being a participant-worker.

3) tell me how I should describe what seen on the clip: a most wonderful neuron-surgeon running around the street with the energy of sky rocket, and then performing the most exciting of surgery to open up human skull. he was calling out at the staff not to give him craps (one black nurse rubbing her sore shoulder as if sustaining injury) –in the ‘theatre’.

yes I use the word theatre, not the OR Americans love to call. Operating room? Yes, usually quite small all over the world. The old professionals called it ‘theatre’ and now I understand the implication of respect in the word 'theatre'.

this neuro surgeon at Hopkins is a superman, no doubt about it. do we see a super team? i am not too sure. Like a piece meal, one man taking care of complex patient condition. Is it that simple--cut & dry? physical and physiological processes took a whole year to heal in the old days --termed rehabilitation.

Also seen on the clip: A young doctor almost kneeling down on the floor at his patient’s (the young child) family and explaining away. Why did he get into so much details when we all know if you opened heart, especially of small children, very often ‘standstill’ or asystole occurs and recurs again, reviving a still heart is such a common-place act in heart surgery. Why is it every tiny detail of the process be told to the family so to make them crinched and cried, since the baby was saved. To save cost, i suggest to let everyone be taped on camera, show it to patients. ask and be explained to. how about this kind of time management? such micro management is here, i literally work under the nose of 3 supervisors, and it's only med/surg in a distric hospital.

Is it an expensive process trying to talk too much at the wrong time, in the wrong place and term it education? (it happens in every hospital, unfortunately, and done by every level of staff, too many spokesmen or spokeswomen. the charge nurses or supervisors should be those talking and delivering customer service because they sit in an office).

The Californian nurse supervisors always told me that ‘you don’t tell the patient you don’t have time, they don’t care, they only want things done, customer service, customer service’

4) Rejoice for Hopkins: I don’t see big fat nurses around. That black nurse in the OR is the best in 'form'. yes, i am annoyed by sweaty, slow and fat co-workers if i were given the most urgent and stressful load.

Yeah, I worked with chimpanzees of nursing aides and big fat nurses at long beach memorial hospital. The manager knew a ‘threatening and unprofessional’ standard and she did it exactly like that, the 5th floor Med/surg employed the most unlikely hospital workers on this planet earth. Imagine tons of Filipina talking in Tagalog wherever they went, lazy big fat workers chatting and singing in the hallway, joking and filling up the hallway, of course, jamming the patient’s room. But, that is what the patients want. Then, one day disasters strike, death after death. Social worker came to wrap up the case and smooth out hurt feeling.

disclosure of personal condition: I am grateful for the chance of nursing as a RN in california, even though I will have to leave next year. I am an old single woman without a green card. the immigration director stated that the CGFNS refused to issue nurse certification. My application for a green card was a total mistake because I am a Canadian citizen (but a hongkong Chinese is a different class, I know. Wherever I go I am a third class citizen, even among Chinese because I cannot speak Mandarin, how ambarrassing at the age of 61. not in china, not in Taiwan, not in Singapore, and very bad status in a Chinese hospital (pacific alliance medical center in los angeles)

CGFNS did not issue the labor certificate because the SE Kent School of Nursing was closed for University Nursing Education. A joke here: even the young recruiter said on the phone that she did not know what was ‘school transcript’, and what nursing school was about pretending she was a new generation not knowing what before her.

Well, a single paragraph above summed up the personal dilemma of a hospital worker, doesn’t it? How about the tens of thousands hospital workers everyday. I am saying most spend their 50% of time self-serving at work-place. I am an old nurse who can bear witness to that. When I started nursing, I was made to do labor chores, tending patients needs non-stop, only rest at breaks. Now they don’t mention ‘rest breaks’ and dim the matter, but through 12 hours they sit around most of the time doing documentation and signing initials and signatures (good fun if someone tally the counts every nurse signs how many times a day, much much more than an accountant). What’s worse in general hospitals, they talk and talk bonding with each other more than half of their time. What’s worse, they let ancillary services run the show, it’s no more medical and nursing staff who are the pillars of ‘hospital system’. What’s worse, it’s a topsy-turvy situation, the unlicensed think they have equal power and try to butt in and have things their own way: unit secretaries whose skills worse than clerks but they are doctors confidantes, nursing assistants so lazy to work to rules and are found sitting there snoozing 40% of their time on night shift, not even delivering basic supplies to patients.

Guess that is eternal human struggle or class struggle in hospital management all over the world. Then, you would ask, Mr. Rose, what should be the focus, what should be the directions...i can't even think as i am only one...i am sure you will help us and formulate better questions or inquisition.

nurse at ground floor. sure i luv the peoples here.

Thank you for reading my comments.

(how do i write a book, a small book? back in 1975, my best encounter was a certain nursing assistant in London worked on a book ..yeah, yeah, she wrote 'THE THORN BIRD'...a best-seller..wasn't it? )