Bedside Manners

New York Times: That’s what Janice Langbehn, a social worker in Lacey, Wash., says she experienced when her partner of 18 years, Lisa Pond, collapsed with an aneurysm during a Florida vacation and was taken to a Miami trauma center. She died there, at age 39, as Ms. Langbehn tried in vain to persuade hospital officials to let her visit, along with the couple’s adopted children.

“I have this deep sense of failure for not being at Lisa’s bedside when she died,” Ms. Langbehn said. “How I get over that I don’t know, or if I ever do.”

The case, now the subject of a federal lawsuit in Florida, is being watched by gay rights groups, which say same-sex partners often report being excluded from a patient’s room because they aren’t “real” family members.

I don't look at this as a gay rights story. I look at it as a hospital-staffs-are-stupid story.

Hospitals are like any other bureaucracy. If you've been in one lately, then you know that it isn't a place where the sick are cared for. They're processed.

TV shows like Grey's Anatomy and House have greatly reinforced the idea that once you become injured or ill, you are a piece of meat with no rights. You will be tended to by wise cracking doctors who discuss their sex lives while your heart is exposed to the open air. Worrying thought: is it all bogus, or have the writers done their homework and art is imitating life?

House in particular is teaching aspiring physicians that their problems are far more pressing than a patient's. If you watch an episode of House (and I often do; I like the show) then you will see that every episode is simply a lengthy experiment on a hapless extra. Patient ill? Try this drug. Still ill? Open up his brain. Still ill? Try another drug. Dying? Zap him with the paddles. Still ill? Give him yet another drug, until, ta-da! He's all better. The show never goes into the pain of the patient. In fact, the stars rarely speak the patient's name. The patient only survives because House and his team have stumbled upon the right drug to cure him before their previous fifteen treatments did him in.

I remember watching one Grey's Anatomy episode that really drove the point home: the interns were delighted to find a bunch of dead bodies in the morgue so they could practice on them in every Dr. Mengele way possible. After two episodes of chopping dead people to bits, one of the stars finally caught them and gave a short speech on how upset she was. These were people, didn't they see? Nice try. The next episode, back to yukking it up over a man's squashed face.

I've probably channelled him too often, but Warhol was right: celebrities not only teach us how to behave, but more importantly how to look while behaving. When I split my finger open a few weeks ago, I went to get stitches. They broke out the ampules of freezing liquid, the needles, and the thread. Then the nurse told me that Grey's Anatomy was her favorite TV show.

It was not a comforting statement.