I have a few friends who are nurses and their major grievance is how doctors don't communicate well with them at all, let alone the patients. You know, nurses know more about the patients in essence that they are working very closely with them. And if only the doctors took one or two minutes to listen to the nurses, a LOT of distress and undue hassle to the patient/nurse could be avoided. For example, the nurse knows this patient has been unable to swallow medicines but the doc kept prescribing him more of the tablets. All he had to do is ask the nurse to give him the latest briefing about the patient and he would have known what was going on and perhaps would have prescribed him something else. And really, it's the little; nearly trivial kind of issue is what can cause a setback. Now I am not sure if she could have just left a note on the patient’s roster stating that but the point is, communication is the key here! And, that seems to be lacking plenty.
Part of that is a systemic problem that isn't always obvious to the public. I have several friends who are residents who routinely work 6 or 7 days/week and 12-14 hours/day, not to mention the 24 hour shifts they do from time to time. And they still have to rush to get through all their patients! Its crazy, and its not conducive to good medicine, IMO. But, just like fixing education through getting more teachers to provide more individual time to students, its really expensive to do it any other way. A resident eats up 80 hours/week and only makes ~$50,000/year (plus benefits).
Agreed. There is a lot of low-hanging fruit when it comes to fixing medicine, at least in the US. My father spent a lot of time in the hospital. If we didn't proactively advocate for treatment that fit his condition, and stave off redundancy, it would have cost him an incredible amount of hardship. Good doctors ask questions.