Had a hospital clinic appointment today. There's a couple of big signs just inside the entryway, which is great!
I get to the clinic clerk, and after the usual nonsense of none of them bothering to find ways to accommodate patients they "can't hear" through a mask, asks me, "Are you wearing a mask for safety or a health condition?"
Erm, yes? Both!??!!
😳🙄😐
1/x
#abhealth
#AHS
#yeg
#MaskUp
#CovidIsInYourFacilityRightNow
#SafetySignage
I mean seriously--fine. Not a single one of you has bothered to learn to read fingerspelling in four full years of an ongoing pandemic.
But perhaps you could put an ABC card out that people could point to. Or even a freaking Ouiji board, for gossake!
This is something that the INSTITUTIONS should be addressing, not fobbed off on each individual patient. 😡
2/x
#SystemFailure
#SystemicFailures
#ActuallyDisabled
#abhealth
#yeg
The ongoing failure of institutions to solve institutional problems has been demonstrated so clearly throughout the #covid19 pandemic.
It's probably pretty critical for healthcare professionals to be able to communicate with patients, including receiving info FROM patients.
But *patients* are supposed to fix this, ad-hoc? And with increasingly snippy and IMpatient admitting clerks?
3/x
Deaf people in Canada have a legal right to a qualified ASL interpreter in these circumstances.
I'm not Deaf but was myself an interpreter in decades' past.
Funny how if I switch to ASL there is NEVER an offer to acquire an interpreter, which might be a reasonable inference that an ASL-speaker might use?
4/x
To be clear: I do not want to unnecessarily waste limited interpreter resources or reduce availability for actual Deaf patients.
But the lack of institutional-side #problemSolving is stunning.
The sole thing I have with me at all times that can aid my communication is my hands--but that just offends clerks?
Ffs. I do not think it is unreasonable for front-facing admin to be inclusive and creative in ensuring good patient relations and #accessibility.
5/x
Keep in mind--this is just to get checked in for an appointment.
An appointment with a specialist that--if you happen not to show up--gets you kicked off their roster and a new multi-month referral waittime must be navigated with your family doc (if you have one).
6/x
What if I have confirmed my appointment but the clerk never signs me in? Who failed here?
Not me.
But I'm the one who will bear 100% of the consequences of the institution failing to #adapt or #accommodate for changed circumstances such as the pandemic OR patient #disability.
7/x
Over the past four years I have experienced innumerable snarky comments, pursed lips, variations of "tsk tsk" because I am somehow not fixing their lack of planning or adaptation on their behalf.
Excuse me?
And that's the clerks. It was even worse before the NPIs were eradicated.
8/x
Back when mask mandates were actually a thing, I had to attend these same sorts of hospital clinics.
Long before I could even get to a snarky clerk I jad to deal with the screening desk, which tried very hard to manipulate me into taking off my safe, #ElastomericRespirator and exchange it for a #BaggyBlue procedure mask.
Despite being disabled nearly life-long, this was the first I'd ever become deeply anxious about seeing doctors.
9/x
Because again, on the whim of an extremely-dodgy facility #policy, the consequences of me refusing to put my already terribly-fragile health to the luck of a procedure mask's ability to do anything useful at all meant that I could be refused entrance completely.
To a specialist.
Whom I have waited months to see and NEED to see.
And have confirmed I will see that day.
But I still might not get past the gatekeepers at the entryway.
10/x
Aside: Some folks here know me IRL and even then may not know just how much I have to balance to stay alive.
The TL;DR version is that just like Mr Burns from the Simpsons visiting the Mayo clinic, my body and its many chronic issues are like all these novelty diseases attempting to squeeze through a single door. One thing shifts, and they can all bust loose to cause total mayhem.
11/x
I spend time every single week at at least one medical appointment. There are labs at least once a month, sometimes more. And then there are specialists.
And in between all those appointments? Doing my very best to stay alive.
If it were a job it would be far more than FT. It's no wonder I can hardly do anything else on any given day, beyond an hour or two if I'm VERY lucky! 😐
12/x
As I see that I am starting to ramble--my apologies.
Today was just another of those days where something that should have been easy and routine was NEEDLESSLY HARD and it is just so, so exhausting.
And while it does not happen every single time, it CAN happen ANY time.
And it's about time healthcare institutions stepped up and started making this better.
Because I will not be dying for *their* convenience. 😡
13/13
Ikr? It's genuinely shocking.
At the beginning when people still expressed some sort of public solidarity and we had ongoing routine updates from health and government leaders, me responding with fingerspelling was received quite well even if the other person didn't understand it.
*They* would then offer an alternate. Now? Skark. Disbelief. Rarely any extension of offer of assistance. 🙄😡😢
Yes, I do have things like Big Note that I can use in a pinch. But it seems to me that the expectation to fob everything off on the individual is done so casually.
The thing is, sure, I carry a smart phone, so perhaos a simple fix.
But I also have to carry diabetic supplies, extra snacks, and now even straws. Even little thingd add up to a LOT of crap to portage around because institutions don't even bother with the minimum. 😡
Lol! At least that would have been personally helpful. I could've used a snack by the time I was done. 😂
The question was baffling not only because the facility itself has these giant signs advising masking, but that the clerk and I had already established they couldn't/wouldn't understand anything I said, so why engage further with no accommodations?
Seemed like some sort of checklist question, no response required as long as the clerk asked it. 🙄
Yeah that's part of the whole fundamental evil of bad policy. ☹️
I've been pro-mask from the very beginning but the sole locations I've been treated like crap for it have invariably been large hospital-based clinics, where policy dictated that it was 'use these procedure masks or hit the highway'.
Even the requirement for a 'clean' mask was stupid if the new mask wasn't N95 or better. Do they think we snuggle our faces on healthcare workers? 🙄🙄🙄
I also had a couple of run-ins with screening desks staffed by security personnel.
While I don't appreciate healthcare workers in scrubs trying to get me to do something literally dangerous to get to my appointment, I am even less appreciative of security personnel essentially trying to make a healthcare order.
I don't care if they're 1 week from graduating as an MD, if they are dressed as security, they have ZERO business making healthcare decisions for patients! 😡
I do understand the choices they were making and enforcing. They were still wrong to do so.
I live in a province with a LOT of resource extraction. According to hospital-policy logic, it must be magic that those folks can work safely with toxic gases in a respirator.
And a security officer ordering a chronically-ill patient to remove protective gear on threat of denying access to treatment providers? DEFINITELY is out of their wheelhouse.
Likely Jan Lukas
Kelly's Shenanigans 🇨🇦
Marion Donnelly
Skip Lacaze