Wednesday, April 14, 2010
McKenzie Holthaus (Guest student author)
As a student that is going to the health profession as an athletic trainer, I feel that out-patient care is very essential for treatment and recovery methods. In our training facility, we deal with several athletes that had just been released from surgery. It is our job to help them rehab and strengthen those treated areas. One of my first experiences with out-patient care was this spring. I took an athlete to a surgery center to have an ACL and meniscal repair. After the process of recovering from anesthesia, the patient was released into my care. The next day we started therapy and rehabilitative exercises. Without out-patient care, the patients expenses would be greatly increased. By allowing patients to be released, it allows them to start their recovery process and saves them and their insurance company quite a bit of money. Most out-patient staff members are very well trained in the service that they provide. In these situations, all the care a patients needs is provided in one place, for example, the athletic training facility.
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I definately agree with you. I myself had to have surgery for a torn ACL and being able to be released from the hospital and work on my own with the help of well trained staff to get myself recovered faster was a great help. Outpatient care made me responsible for my recovery in a way and allowed me to own my success of recovery. Going in for PT during the week and striving to meet goals of flexability in my knee not only made me work harder but in the long run I have come out of surgery with a stonger knee.
ReplyDeleteI also feel that outpatient care is essential to control costs in our health care system. I'm just concerned that some patients are hurried through their procedures and then in the long run, more problems are caused. My cousin just recently had her first child and she was in and out of recovery in less time than her labor took. When she was at home, her and her husband ran into many problems with proper breast feeding techniques and they expressed concern that they were not appropriately taught how to do this in that important time after the baby is born. Because of this, the natural process of breast feeding became a huge stressor in their new lives as a family.
ReplyDeleteMy experience confirms your comments. I had both of my hips replaced and was greatly helped by out-patient physical therapy at the hospital "gym" - therapy center. I was in the hospital three days for my first surgery, and only two the second time. Knowing that I could participate in an out-patient therapy program gave me optimism to go home sooner, which promoted quicker healing - due to better sleep and surroundings than found in a hospital.
ReplyDeleteThank you for authoring on this blog. I appreciate your thoughts about improving health care and hope you will comment on other postings in this blog or other blogs about health care.
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