and dragging along a portable IB
on a rackety pedestal, and their are hospitals attendance
that talk to each other chair fully behind desk as
they fill out forms and direct patients and visitors
to the right department. But no one screaming "Give
me fifty cc's of Demerol" with wailing relatives
chaising the stretcher as the patient is wheeled through
in front of anybody and everybody in the reception
area. Emergencies are quickly dispatched to the emergency
room, a quite wing that is both private and secretive.
The other thing I notice about real hospitals is that
no one is in a hurry. On T.V its all rush and bustle,
hither and thither, nurses running, doctors running,
patients running away from doctors and vice-versa.
In a real hospital every one moves slowly, calmly,
going about their business in an ordinary way, though
the practice of saving life and restoring health is
any thing but ordinary. I can understand why patient
moves slowly. They are tired, they are unwell, and
they are frightened, and non of these makes you want
to move like a compatitor in the Boston Marathon.
Doctors, too, move carefully, each step filled with
self-purpose. It must be one of the ten commandments
of medical practice; "Though shalt not run so
as to upset your patients". But perhaps there
is no point to running. Doctor will go to their patients
and tend to them, and all though its drummed in our
hands that a few seconds can make the life saving
difference, perhaps these doctors no something that
we do not. Both these parameters-silence and deliberation-change
when the hospital is at its busiest, Usually in the
evenings, when patients descenb upon it in drobs.
From four p.m. onwards, the hospital became a
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