An invitation to sit and visit

The first week I went to visit this patient, he thanked me for coming by, but made it clear that he didn’t want to visit that day.

When I walked in the second week, he asked me to sit down, and he and his wife talked to me about a tragic event that had happened at their home the previous week while they were here in the hospital. At the end of the visit, I offered to pray with them, but they politely declined.

Today, I received a message that they wanted me to come see them. He had been released from the hospital last week, but was back with an infection and in ICU. This time as I entered the room, prayer was their main agenda.

It’s a reminder that my role is to just show up — to be a representative of God and His people. How individuals react to my presence any given week depends on their circumstances and their needs. The polite rejection I received the first week was no more about me than the request today that I come and pray.

But it is a reminder that it’s all about Him, the God who offers hope and comfort when we need it most.

What's your target? Photo credit: Jake Vance (Flickr)

If your organization is focused on laying off people and cost cutting, then it’s not focused on your mission.  And neither are the people who work in your organization.  They’re focused on whether they will have a job or not.

Times such as we are in now seem to be consumed with organizations laying people off and focusing on cost cutting — you know, the serious expenses like coffee for employees and visitors, pens and pencils, paper, printer cartridges.  It’s crisis management.  And anyone who’s ever been there knows that when crisis management rears its ugly head, the organization and all of its members totally lose their focus on the mission of the organization.

Leaders seem to actually love crisis management.  It makes what they do seem so important — they’re “saving the organization” to fight another day.  But what happens in reality, is that on another day, the organization will not have the critical mass of talented people to continue to fight, to continue to do the mission.  And slowly but surely the organization will begin to decline, as it finds itself thrown back into crisis management again and again.

Organizations need to stay focused on their mission in times like this.  Providing healing care for people in their hospitals.  Providing reliable financial services to other businesses and to individuals.  Providing for reliable flows of materials and products.  If they don’t, someone else will rise and and do it in their place.

And organizations need to take care of their people, because their people are the ones who carry out their mission.  If they’re constantly worried about losing their jobs, the mission will suffer.  If they don’t have confidence that the organization’s leadership can lead the organization through the “crisis,” the mission will suffer.

When will we remember that our organizations exist to perform the mission, not merely to survive as an organization?

What can I expect?  What’s going to happen?  Can I handle it?  What can I do to prepare?  And a thousand other questions.

While none of us can predict precisely what the future will hold, there are some things we can do to get a better handle on the possibilities and probabilities.  And when we understand the possibilities and probabilities, we can do something very important:  prepare and plan.

So how do we determine the possibilities and probabilities?

• Google can be your best friend.  Just be sure to go to trusted sites, and stay away from non-authoritative sites.  For medical issues, the NIH sites and organizations like Mayo and other big healthcare organizations are most reliable.  You’ll also find good information on sites from organizations dedicated to major diseases.
• Ask your medical providers.  Also ask them for material or organizations they would recommend to help you.  Ask them who can help you navigate what might be ahead.
• Consider joining a support group of caregivers dealing with issues similar to yours.  You’ll find people who have already dealt with many of the possibilities and probabilities you are facing.

The better handle you have on what you can expect, the better job you can do in preparing to deal with what may happen.  If it’s possible that home healthcare may be needed, for example, you can do some investigating on services available in your area and get some feedback on how satisfied others who have used their service are.  If it’s probable that at some point a facility specializing in caring for those with dementia will be required, you can become familiar with those in your area, get some feedback on them, and maybe even get to know the management so you are prepared when the time comes.

Why do this learning and preparation that you might not have to use?  Because being prepared helps you deal with your caregiving responsibilities more confidently.  Because being prepared adds a measure of peace to your caregiving.  And because there will be enough unexpected turns in caregiving to keep the adrenalin flowing.  You just don’t need any extra that you could have prepared for.

Next is a post by Amy VanHuisen that talks about 3 Reasons Not to Panic When Listening to the Daily Economic News.  Amy’s writing is always thoughtful, and thought-provoking.

Here’s a post from my folksy friend Robert Hrusek that talks about what it feels like to be looking for a job.  Thankfully, Robert found a new job this week.

If you’re prefer a book, Mary DeMuth has a new one coming out, and here’s the trailer for it.  After you watch the trailer, you can also read the first chapter free online.

Finally, Kindle for iPhone came out this week. So I downloaded unChristian, which I’ve been planning to read for some time.  The reading experience is great, and it helps me get stuff read by being able to read anytime I have a few minutes since it’s on my phone.  (By the way, I recently read that 10% of Amazon’s book sales last year were for the Kindle.)

So what have you been reading that you’d recommend to me?

Those of you reading by email may want to click on the title which will take you to the blog so you can see what it looks like.

Let me know what you think.

Help Wanted

Today, I’m asking for some input on two questions.

1.  Is there anything that you haven’t seen in the Hospital Visits series that you’d like to see addressed?  You can review what’s been covered by clicking here to get the summary view for the category.  Note that there are two pages.  By the way, I now plan to turn the series into an e book which will be available here free.

2.  The next series I plan to write will be on family care giving. We’ll talk about caring for parents, spouses, other adult relatives, and even children and grandchildren.  What would you like to see included, what questions do you have, etc. that will help guide me?

Thanks for your feedback, and for the encouragement I’ve received from many.

Photo Credit:  K Nicholl

Sleeping in Car

It may not surprise you that a lot of hospital patients’ family members spend the night in the patient’s room.

Most of the time, this means sleeping on a chair-bed, a device that’s not usually very comfortable as either a chair or a bed.   Some hospitals are more thoughtful in design, and have a built in couch/bed that’s actually quite comfortable.  Still others provide no accommodation for family members.

Family members spend the night in patients’ rooms or in waiting rooms for several reasons. The most common are:

• They feel the need and/or the patient feels the need for them to be there.  I still remember quite well trying to rig some arrangement of chairs in the NICU waiting room while my wife was there after surgery, and failing pretty miserably.  It was important to her and to me that I was close during that critical time.

• If folks are from out of town, they may not be able to afford the cost of hotel accommodations.  I frequently visit with patients who’ve spent weeks in the hospital, and a spouse or parent or adult child has spent every night in their room.  While sometimes the cite the desire to be there, they often talk about the cost of a hotel.

What may surprise you, though, is how many people sleep in their cars because they don’t have the money for lodging.   I occasionally observe it  in the medical center garages, and know that people sleeping in their cars is fairly widespread.

Family members sacrificing comfort to be with family in the hospital is a fact of life, as is people sleeping in cars so their family member can be at a major medical center for treatment.

There are some organizations that work with the hospital social work departments to provide funding on a need basis for housing.  One I’m familiar with is Compassionate Touch.  You can even help if you wish.

The first was from a 5 year-old boy who asked his mom, “Can we pray for me a new face?  This one doesn’t work very well.”  He can’t smile as a result of brain cancer surgery.  His name is Gage, if you want to join his family and those of us who know him through CarePages in praying for him.

Then there’s a graphic prayer request from Debby, via her sister, which was posted on Flickr.  Both are well known in the Houston Twitter community.  (Be sure and take a look at this request.)

And third, Larry James wrote a nice blog post about what he’s feeling facing life following the passing of both of his parents.

Social networking, a product of Web 2.0, is powerful for building and engaging community.  As these three examples show, it’s a very effective way to reach out and share what’s happening in your life and get support from a caring community.

Maybe some of you have stories of how the web community has been helpful in supporting you through a difficult season.  If so, please post about it in the comments.

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Tomorrow, in response to several recent comments and suggestions,  I plan to start a new series here about making visits to seriously ill folks.

Hope you’re enjoying your holidays!

Habits for Effectiveness

An article in the New York Times entitled “Six Habits of Highly Effective Physicians” by Dr. Michael Kahn caught my attention this week thanks to a note from Paul Riddle at Lifeline Chaplaincy.

I wasn’t sure what to expect from the title.

Maybe things like keeping current on the literature, attending conferences, seeking help from other physicians, tracking their cure rates, and other similar things lwould be in the list.

Turns out that Dr. Kahn’s list had things in it that were much more important.

• Ask permission to enter the room; wait for an answer.

• Introduce yourself; show your ID badge.

• Shake hands.

• Sit down. Smile if appropriate.

• Explain your role on the health care team.

• Ask how the patient feels about being in the hospital.

So those are the six habits of highly effective physicians.  Interesting, because it asks the physician to do something very basic — show respect for the patient as a fellow human being.  And doing that makes them highly effective as healers.

So what about you and what you do?  Is there a similar list that makes you highly effective?  Or does your list look more like the one I started — keeping up with the latest advancements, etc.?

Today might be a good time to make or review that list.