Hospital Social Distancing

How to change Hospital Social Distancing is an important consideration. As America begins to reopen I hope hospitals are looked at in the same way states and are looking at geographic areas. Just as all areas of a state are not the same, hospitals are not the same either. Hospitals should be looked at separately from the rest of the businesses and consideration given for proper patient care.

The Negative Impact On Patient Care

Patients who have a good attitude heal better. Patients who are alone and have little encouragement can take longer to heal and may get worse. Compare their situation to yours. Social Distancing in the house all of the time with not much to look forward to can be depressing. The result is that you just don’t feel like yourself, maybe your not depressed but you most likely don’t feel on top of your game. Another big factor is the lack of an advocate, I will discuss this in a later post.

Families Suffer Too

Families who cannot visit their loved ones in the hospital suffer too. I can tell you first hand because my wife has been in a hospital for almost 3 months as of this writing due to social distancing. I have not been able to visit her since March 16th, 2020 but can FaceTime. That’s not the same as in-person visiting for either the patient or the family.

What’s The Solution?

First, let me say, stopping all visitation was the right thing to do. As hard as it may be, it most likely saved a lot of lives. The solution now is to look at every hospital with respect to the number of COVID-19 patients in the hospital and the surrounding area. If there are not COVID-19 patients in a hospital or very few and the infection rate is going down it should be ok to begin allowing visitors. Hospitals can screen people, limit visitors to one per patient, use proper PPE, and limit visiting times. There are probably other solutions that I’m not aware of but surely the time has come to start looking at options and let families get back together.

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