Where I work, hospital staff is busy all of the time.  The nurses and CNAs aren’t  sitting around surfing the internet. They are truly working their asses off. However, despite their hard work, they have more things to attend to than they have time.  In addition, they see people like you every day. To them, you aren’t anything special. Even though you just woke up with an amputated arm, to the nurses, you are just another drugged up body lying in a hospital bed. You can’t be special to them, because then everybody would have to be special to them. 

This disconnectedness can be very cruel to the patient whether or not the situation actually is cruel. To treated as an animal, as a number, as a part of an assembly line.  The disconnectedness of the staff is compounded by the fact that you aren’t really behaving like a human. You are drugged up and miserable, and you look like hell.

Sometimes the disconnectedness can take a darker turn. It sucks and it breaks my heart to see people crushed by the potential (and rare at my place of employ) indignities of the hospital. CNAs who don’t pull curtains around when they help a person with a bedpan.  Patients in agony who have to wait for their pain medication because their nurse is on a break, and all the other nurses have their own emergencies.  It sucks, and in healthcare, things that suck, suck a lot more than it sucks in other industries. A barista handing you a cup of old coffee is a lot more forgivable than a nurse forgoing to change your bloody bed sheets because she was busy.

Customer service jobs are about prioritization.  You can’t make pizzas, take money, and bus tables at the same time. Nurses have infinite things to prioritize. And you are part of that list of things.  And you need to bump yourself up on that list. In addition you have to FIGHT to not be treated as a product.  You need to take an active role in humanizing yourself to hospital staff. 

Here’s what you can do to keep yourself from being treated like a lump of flesh while you lie in a hospital recovering from your surgery.

1.  Flowers – And the more the better. Trust me. This is the biggest signal to hospital staff that someone gives a shit about the patient.  I don’t care if your ailing mother has been in and out of the hospital for the last 5 years.   You need to send her flowers  --EVERY--TIME--  she is admitted. Flowers advertise that a person is actively loved. Nurses don't want angry friends and family. If you don’t have friends and family sending you flowers, send yourself some flowers.  It’s important.

(If this seams wasteful, buy plants instead of flowers then take them home afterwards.)

2.  Resist wearing the hospital provided gown and pants – But only if you can get away with it.   Bring and wear your own clothes. You might not be able to follow this if you have IVs and tubes hanging everywhere. But the point is that you don’t want to look like every other patient in that hospital. You don’t want to be just another miserable animal wearing a blue sheet with snaps.  You want to look like an individual. 

3.  Put up pictures of yourself when you were healthy – Bring in frames, and set them up around the room. Nothing humanizes a drugged up lump of flesh more than a picture of the same lump with makeup and pretty hair running around in a field with three kids.  If the patient is super, super old, pictures are especially important. 

4.  Act lucid – If you can. Don’t spend 8 hours a day staring into the hallway or watching TV.  You don’t have to act like an intellectual.  Just grab a People magazine about the royal couple and read it or just stare at William and Kate’s pretty faces.  Talk on your cell phone.  Play crossword puzzles and word finds.  Acknowledge people who walk into the room. It’s easy for a nurse to down prioritize a person who isn’t acting aware of their surroundings.

5. Know the names of the individuals on your patient care team  -- Ask for names when people come into your room.  When you ask, don’t be all cliché and say, “Awe, that’s such a pretty name.” Fifty people have already said that to your nurse this month.  Just look thoughtful and file the information away. Write it down. Use it.  I answer call buttons on a regular basis.  When a patient requests, “Please send Sheila to my room,” instead of “Can you call my nurse?” The effect is much more authoritative and indicates that the patient is aware of surroundings.

6. Insist on basics – If you smell, that’s bad. If your sheets haven't been changed in 4 days, that’s bad. If someone decides to change your diaper with the door open, that’s bad.   Asking for these things to be fixed doesn't make you needy, it makes you human. I’m sometimes appalled at how insecure patients can be in demanding they be treated well.  The patient care team has an infinite list of things to do, but you need to be an ACTIVE part of being at the top of that list.

In the end it boils down to – You will be treated better if you are lucid and loved. If you aren’t either of those things, do your best to fake it.