7 ms·

Why do patients leave against medical advice?

23 points by luu 3y ago

swayvil 3y ago
Because the hospital is clearly an incredibly unhealthy place to be. A nightmare. It's Walmart. Or a meat factory. Or a jiffy-lube. The cashier wants to stick a needle in you. The surgeon forgot to install your oil-filter. And don't get me started on the staff. Most of the doctors I meet are just children with technical training. Mentally stunted. Sleep deprived. These are not the people you want fiddling with your health, or anything or anybody that you care about.
sys32768 3y ago
My five-hour Atrial fibrillation didn't convert until I left the hospital ER. The hospital was so stressful with constant beeps, patients moaning or crying, staff disappearing, that it was obviously keeping my pulse high despite meds. I honestly felt like my job was to comfort the harried staff. When I got my meds the next day, they only cost $0 because I used up my entire $6k deductible that night.
- hondo77 3y ago
  During my hospitalization for thyroid storm/afib, they had the heart monitor alarm set to too low a heart rate for what I had. It was loudly beeping constantly. I kept asking the nurses to fix it but was given various excuses. Finally I unplugged my connection and told staff that I wasn't going to let them plug me back in until the alarm was fixed. They finally adjusted it. I watched how they did it, though. So the next time someone set the alarm too low, I waited until the coast was clear and I set it back. Good nights of sleep were back!
0xcde4c3db 3y ago
> Other reported reasons that contributed to a patient deciding to leave the hospital against medical advice include poor customer service, respect, and quality of care. This perception was determined majorly by the cultural background and the healthcare team. I know a rural guy who was once damn near ready to start a fistfight to get his wife out of the local hospital AMA. He believed they weren't qualified or equipped to actually give her proper care and were basically just stalling with useless treatments. And, at least as she tells the story, he was absolutely fucking right to drive her down the highway to a hospital in the nearest "real" city. I guess word gets around when the only hospital within 25 miles has a habit of falling back on explanations like "it's just heartburn; the next round of antacids will definitely fix it".
kajecounterhack 3y ago
My dad had a heart-related scare, but we left the hospital after waiting 10 hours and not being seen (we were checked in an triaged, but that was it). Thank goodness I had prepared multiple meals + brought water but we did not expect that long of a wait, especially for something heart related. After all that time, it just felt less risky to go home and get some baby aspirin. They made us sign a waiver as we left.
- adastra22 3y ago
  > They made us sign a waiver as we left. Could you have refused?
  - kajecounterhack 3y ago
    Maybe? We were tired and just wanted to go so we didn't fight them on it.
    - adastra22 3y ago
      I mean you could just… go. Like get up and walk out of the room. Unless you’re under a psychiatric hold or other such specialized circumstances, they have no legal authority to keep you there. It’d be holding you against your will, and a criminal action by the hospital. You have the right to just get up and walk out without signing a damn thing, though they may try to tell you otherwise.
      - kajecounterhack 3y ago
        In retrospect we probably should have just done that.
brentis 3y ago
Because you realize the Drs. are proxies for hospitals and err on the side of hospital stay despite quality of life balance. They follow guardrails closely aligned with insurance and liability too. Unfortunately.
alsetmusic 3y ago
I was recovering from insomnia and slipped on a spilled drink in the night. I had thirteen stitches from my head hitting a table. When I came to, I had an orderly follow me down the hall, trying to convince me to stay as I might have a concussion. I called a cab (pre-Uber, at least for me) and went home. I just hate hospitals. Was it stupid? Probably. Though I’d probably do it again.
0xDEFACED 3y ago
My ~18 month old son is medically complex, and his pediatricians send him to the ER basically every other week. ER docs run a bunch of tests, shrug and say LGTM and send us home. The hospital is an hour away, and they never get any closer to figuring out what the problem is (just follow up with X specialist in Y months). My wife and I are sick of it, but we’re worried that if we don’t take him in when they tell us to that CPS might get involved. So off we go, wash rinse repeat. All of that to say, if someone wants to leave early, I get it.
- peteradio 3y ago
  I don't know what medically complex means exactly but it sounds like you are being taken advantage of. Can you find a new set of pediatricians and see if they put you through the same ringer? That sounds horrendously expensive.
singularity2001 3y ago
When I wanted to get my teeth straightened the first doctor suggested pulling two teeth to make room. I walked out quickly. The second doctor confirmed the suspicion that this would have been completely unnecessary.
thenerdhead 3y ago
This paragraph caught my eye: > The financial burden is not imposed on the patient only; the healthcare system is also affected by the consequence of leaving against medical advice. Reports have shown that the cost of an average stay was USD 3716.00 for those patients who left as planned. However, patients who left against medical advice and were readmitted had an average bill of USD 10,761.56 for staying 4.7 days in the hospital upon readmission. This makes me laugh. As if medical care in the USA isn't already ridiculously inflated. > Perhaps the most effective way to decrease discharge AMA is through changing existing policies and/or implementing new policies. Historically, governmental policies, incentivizing or penalizing, have dramatically driven substantial changes in the medical system. For example, different healthcare policies/programs have led to improved healthcare access in non-urban areas. Another example is the change of practitioner compensation from traditional fee-for-service models to bundled-payment models that resulted in a better quality of patient experience [51]. Therefore, implementing a lower rate of discharge AMA in hospital metrics, for example, will incentivize hospitals to further invest in mitigating discharge AMA. We absolutely shouldn't penalize people who leave a for-profit business for not getting the service they desire. Also changing to fee-for-service would help people do a cost-benefit on their medical issues. If we are going to live in a capitalism world, then let hospitals compete for your money.
- kenjackson 3y ago
  > This makes me laugh. As if medical care in the USA isn't already ridiculously inflated. Honestly this is an area where I'd invite Elon Musk to come in and disrupt. In the same way that he disrupted space travel and electric vehicles in part by asking, "do we need to do everything in the expected high cost manner"? Question if you need certain things to be at certain medical grade for everything. I get that staff is expensive, but everything else seems WAY overpriced.
  - malfist 3y ago
    I think neurolink is a good example of why we don't need Elon disrupting health care
  - ordu 3y ago
bstre 3y ago
I left on day 4 of 6 combatting a MRSA infection. I left on 12/31 because the hospital could not tell me if my current insurance (COBRA) would cover the bills for days 5/6. Absurd. Turns out I was right in my estimations that the course of IV would suffice and also that the remaining days would not be covered. I feel like I 'survived' the hospital system, not MRSA.
- gumby 3y ago
  > I feel like I 'survived' the hospital system, not MRSA. You survived the insurance system (or rather, despite it). The hospitals can't tell you what is covered at the time of service, only well post facto (I literally got a call last week about a copay from surgery I had in May 2022). IMHO most of that blame lies with the insurance companies, but the hospitals are complicit.
  - 0xcde4c3db 3y ago
    The more exposure I have to the health insurance system, the more convinced I am that nobody actually knows what they're doing. For all the insight the average action has, the corresponding actor might as well be a computer program that only compiles on Borland Turbo C++ trying to parse a policy expressed in malformed XML edited by an unpaid intern a decade later. I once got a bill nearly a year after the actual treatment, with a line item that differed only by the description field's whitespace and punctuation from a charge I knew I'd already paid. There was a smaller line item on that bill that I probably hadn't paid, but just through the magic of calling the phone number and sitting through hold, I was told not to pay anything.
- iamthemonster 3y ago
  American health insurance needs an additional layer of insurance where you pay in monthly and if you get sick a consultant with knowledge of health insurance coverage comes along and works out these things. Clearly you were mentally capable at the time, but many times people just get ripped off due to a combination of lack of understanding, will power or grief. The only other industry I can think of that waits until customers are at their most vulnerable before gouging for maximum profit is loan sharks.
Xorakios 3y ago
I left AMA once because I was fine but the hospital wanted my perfect insurance in Yuma, Arizona where most of the patients are uninsured immigrants. I understand that they need to money to survive but three weeks was just outrageous.
- local_crmdgeon 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - LoganDark 3y ago
    It clearly did happen so those people are obviously wrong.
- test77777 3y ago
  [dead]
stevenicr 3y ago
I've witnessed several people AMA from hospitals. All of them were not being treated well for pain and even in cases where there were calls for psych staff to help - there was imo below minimal mental / emotional support given. In a couple of the cases the people were able to find better pain medicine on the street faster than they could even get a doctor to answer a nurses call to deny - and being able to find just one person who would listen or offer any other emotional support was better than what they got paying 10,000$ or whatever it is to stay in a luxurious beeping room. I'm talking about people with real pain - not a junkie looking for a fix. I believe these issues have been exasperated since 2019- it appears that most hospital staff is burn out and no longer fit for the job of handling stressed out, hurting people. 2 out of 3 hospitals around here have big signs all over the place stating they have zero tolerance for rude or abusive people. This policy itself is abused, and it's led to an even worse power dynamic / class war that is making hospitals worse for care, and sending more people to illicit pain management solutions. small data points. more does not equal all - ymmv.
- jnovek 3y ago
  I’m an anecdote, but I deal with chronic pain that is thankfully well-managed at the moment. When it wasn’t as well-managed my experience was that apathy among medical professionals was the norm and compassion was the exception. I’ve had particularly bad experiences in the ER and I’m reluctant to even go there anymore. There’s a whole performative thing you have to do at the ER to “demonstrate” that you’re not a drug seeker and it’s difficult for me because I am somewhat stoical in my expression of pain. I don’t know what’s wrong with the medical system that has created such apathy toward pain, but it feels like it goes beyond just concern over drug-seeking. It’s a critical problem.
  - swayvil 3y ago
    >I don’t know what’s wrong with the medical system that has created such apathy toward pain I think it's that they are harassed 24-7 by addicts seeking drugs. A callous forms. If you are the legit rarity then so sorry. It's a problem with government policy that demonizes addicts and makes drugs hard to get. It's a problem with a pharmaceutical industry that seems to be playing games with supply and manufacturing. It's a problem with a medical industry that maximizes profits by hiring the smallest medical staff possible and running them ragged. It's a dog's dinner all around. In a better world we'd probably hang the bastards. But realistically, I guess what we need is more black-market drug manufacturers. Basement percocet labs. Backyard opium farms.
mutagen 3y ago
TIL Ishikawa fishbone root cause analysis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishikawa_diagram https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishikawa_diagram Of course I've seen them before but was struck by the interesting name.
zabzonk 3y ago
people want to be back in their own homes. i was in hospital a year ago (nhs, fractured ankle) and the guys in the whole ward i was on were literally desperate to get out of the place (which wasn't horrible, and i think the nhs is brilliant). it took me probably an extra week to get discharged that it needn't have done. but there is a lot of arse-covering going on.
- adastra22 3y ago
  Why didn’t they just leave? They’re not prisoners.
  - zabzonk 3y ago
    no, they are not. but if you want to get continuing support, you need to go along with what the medics and ancillary staff are saying. for example, physiotherapy.
- jeffbee 3y ago
  > people want to be back in their own homes Seriously why are "bad food" and "noisy nurses" not on the list of reasons? People want to eat and sleep and if they feel like their acute medical problem is manageable I can see why they'd want to leave.
  - hondo77 3y ago
    This. I was hospitalized for 12 days a couple months ago. At the end, I was going to leave if I wasn't discharged by a certain day because I couldn't take the food anymore. Fortunately, it didn't come to that but, my god, the food was horrible. And I'm not a fussy eater. I did my best to work with what I had, and had friends bring in food from the outside (I wasn't on any restrictions) but I finally reached the end of my rope.
    - zabzonk 3y ago
      ah, you should have spent 5 years at a british boarding school - after that, you will be able to eat and enjoy almost anything! the only things i really draw the line at are whelks and tripe. neither of which are normal hospital food.
docandrew 3y ago
Hospital - where they’ll wake you up to give you a sleeping pill.
kjhughes 3y ago
The shockingly low priority hospitals give to patient sleep might be a factor that the authors missed.
- petsfed 3y ago
  Seriously! When my first child was born, we stayed as long as possible, basically until the nurses more or less kicked us out. There was tons of support, and it was as pleasant an environment as I can easily imagine. For baby #2, the focus was 100% on getting the nurse and doctor through their appointed tasks. 14 hour old baby is actively nursing? Too bad, hand her over, its time to do the measurements. We got so fed up that we requested early checkout, was told "they'll be over in 5 minutes to do last-minute checkout", and after 45 minutes of waiting, we just left. Sometimes, I suspect "against medical advice" actually means "expected medical advice that was never actually delivered".
  - kajecounterhack 3y ago
    They let you leave without checking out? Our hospital was very tight on security because baby identity verification is a whole thing.
    - petsfed 3y ago
      Instead of continuing to wait for the nurse doing their rounds, we went up to the nurse's station, stated our intent to leave, waived off all the "we really think you should stay", then they matched up the ID tags, cut them off, and away we went.
  - Balgair 3y ago
    Pro tip for any spouses out there on that first night in the hospital: Tell the nurses to screw off if baby and mom are doing fine. We had a similar issue in that they would come around every hour and do 45 minutes of testing. Let mom and baby sleep and eat for a while, they've both been through a lot. Also, for the first timer's out there: Your normal rhythm of doing something hard and then going to relax and recoup is not how babies work. Like, you go climb a mountain, take a test, have a hard day at work. Then you go home and relax and recharge, right? That's not how a newborn works. The labor and delivery are the start of the 8-12 week long process of getting the newborn used to a day-night cycle and a feeding cycle. You really don't have any recouping or recharging time for the next 2-3 months. You don't have it after the 2-3 months either, but things get a bit calmer and you'll likely be sleeping more by then though. I don't want to scare you off parenthood, but let you know that the normal way of things is not how your life is going to go now.
annoyingnoob 3y ago
My father went through a crazy amount of medical care in a few short years. He checked himself out AMA twice. Once because the provider was an idiot and making him sicker. Another time so he could die at home instead of in the hospital where they couldn't really help him anyway.

23 points by luu 3y ago

Because the hospital is clearly an incredibly unhealthy place to be. A nightmare. It's Walmart. Or a meat factory. Or a jiffy-lube. The cashier wants to stick a needle in you. The surgeon forgot to install your oil-filter. And don't get me started on the staff. Most of the doctors I meet are just children with technical training. Mentally stunted. Sleep deprived. These are not the people you want fiddling with your health, or anything or anybody that you care about.

sys32768 3y ago

My five-hour Atrial fibrillation didn't convert until I left the hospital ER. The hospital was so stressful with constant beeps, patients moaning or crying, staff disappearing, that it was obviously keeping my pulse high despite meds. I honestly felt like my job was to comfort the harried staff. When I got my meds the next day, they only cost $0 because I used up my entire $6k deductible that night.

hondo77 3y ago
During my hospitalization for thyroid storm/afib, they had the heart monitor alarm set to too low a heart rate for what I had. It was loudly beeping constantly. I kept asking the nurses to fix it but was given various excuses. Finally I unplugged my connection and told staff that I wasn't going to let them plug me back in until the alarm was fixed. They finally adjusted it. I watched how they did it, though. So the next time someone set the alarm too low, I waited until the coast was clear and I set it back. Good nights of sleep were back!

0xcde4c3db 3y ago

> Other reported reasons that contributed to a patient deciding to leave the hospital against medical advice include poor customer service, respect, and quality of care. This perception was determined majorly by the cultural background and the healthcare team. I know a rural guy who was once damn near ready to start a fistfight to get his wife out of the local hospital AMA. He believed they weren't qualified or equipped to actually give her proper care and were basically just stalling with useless treatments. And, at least as she tells the story, he was absolutely fucking right to drive her down the highway to a hospital in the nearest "real" city. I guess word gets around when the only hospital within 25 miles has a habit of falling back on explanations like "it's just heartburn; the next round of antacids will definitely fix it".

kajecounterhack 3y ago

My dad had a heart-related scare, but we left the hospital after waiting 10 hours and not being seen (we were checked in an triaged, but that was it). Thank goodness I had prepared multiple meals + brought water but we did not expect that long of a wait, especially for something heart related. After all that time, it just felt less risky to go home and get some baby aspirin. They made us sign a waiver as we left.

adastra22 3y ago
> They made us sign a waiver as we left. Could you have refused?
- kajecounterhack 3y ago
  Maybe? We were tired and just wanted to go so we didn't fight them on it.
  - adastra22 3y ago
    I mean you could just… go. Like get up and walk out of the room. Unless you’re under a psychiatric hold or other such specialized circumstances, they have no legal authority to keep you there. It’d be holding you against your will, and a criminal action by the hospital. You have the right to just get up and walk out without signing a damn thing, though they may try to tell you otherwise.
    - kajecounterhack 3y ago
      In retrospect we probably should have just done that.

brentis 3y ago

Because you realize the Drs. are proxies for hospitals and err on the side of hospital stay despite quality of life balance. They follow guardrails closely aligned with insurance and liability too. Unfortunately.

alsetmusic 3y ago

I was recovering from insomnia and slipped on a spilled drink in the night. I had thirteen stitches from my head hitting a table. When I came to, I had an orderly follow me down the hall, trying to convince me to stay as I might have a concussion. I called a cab (pre-Uber, at least for me) and went home. I just hate hospitals. Was it stupid? Probably. Though I’d probably do it again.

0xDEFACED 3y ago

My ~18 month old son is medically complex, and his pediatricians send him to the ER basically every other week. ER docs run a bunch of tests, shrug and say LGTM and send us home. The hospital is an hour away, and they never get any closer to figuring out what the problem is (just follow up with X specialist in Y months). My wife and I are sick of it, but we’re worried that if we don’t take him in when they tell us to that CPS might get involved. So off we go, wash rinse repeat. All of that to say, if someone wants to leave early, I get it.

peteradio 3y ago
I don't know what medically complex means exactly but it sounds like you are being taken advantage of. Can you find a new set of pediatricians and see if they put you through the same ringer? That sounds horrendously expensive.

singularity2001 3y ago

When I wanted to get my teeth straightened the first doctor suggested pulling two teeth to make room. I walked out quickly. The second doctor confirmed the suspicion that this would have been completely unnecessary.

thenerdhead 3y ago

This paragraph caught my eye: > The financial burden is not imposed on the patient only; the healthcare system is also affected by the consequence of leaving against medical advice. Reports have shown that the cost of an average stay was USD 3716.00 for those patients who left as planned. However, patients who left against medical advice and were readmitted had an average bill of USD 10,761.56 for staying 4.7 days in the hospital upon readmission. This makes me laugh. As if medical care in the USA isn't already ridiculously inflated. > Perhaps the most effective way to decrease discharge AMA is through changing existing policies and/or implementing new policies. Historically, governmental policies, incentivizing or penalizing, have dramatically driven substantial changes in the medical system. For example, different healthcare policies/programs have led to improved healthcare access in non-urban areas. Another example is the change of practitioner compensation from traditional fee-for-service models to bundled-payment models that resulted in a better quality of patient experience [51]. Therefore, implementing a lower rate of discharge AMA in hospital metrics, for example, will incentivize hospitals to further invest in mitigating discharge AMA. We absolutely shouldn't penalize people who leave a for-profit business for not getting the service they desire. Also changing to fee-for-service would help people do a cost-benefit on their medical issues. If we are going to live in a capitalism world, then let hospitals compete for your money.

kenjackson 3y ago
> This makes me laugh. As if medical care in the USA isn't already ridiculously inflated. Honestly this is an area where I'd invite Elon Musk to come in and disrupt. In the same way that he disrupted space travel and electric vehicles in part by asking, "do we need to do everything in the expected high cost manner"? Question if you need certain things to be at certain medical grade for everything. I get that staff is expensive, but everything else seems WAY overpriced.
- malfist 3y ago
  I think neurolink is a good example of why we don't need Elon disrupting health care
- ordu 3y ago

bstre 3y ago

I left on day 4 of 6 combatting a MRSA infection. I left on 12/31 because the hospital could not tell me if my current insurance (COBRA) would cover the bills for days 5/6. Absurd. Turns out I was right in my estimations that the course of IV would suffice and also that the remaining days would not be covered. I feel like I 'survived' the hospital system, not MRSA.

gumby 3y ago
> I feel like I 'survived' the hospital system, not MRSA. You survived the insurance system (or rather, despite it). The hospitals can't tell you what is covered at the time of service, only well post facto (I literally got a call last week about a copay from surgery I had in May 2022). IMHO most of that blame lies with the insurance companies, but the hospitals are complicit.
- 0xcde4c3db 3y ago
  The more exposure I have to the health insurance system, the more convinced I am that nobody actually knows what they're doing. For all the insight the average action has, the corresponding actor might as well be a computer program that only compiles on Borland Turbo C++ trying to parse a policy expressed in malformed XML edited by an unpaid intern a decade later. I once got a bill nearly a year after the actual treatment, with a line item that differed only by the description field's whitespace and punctuation from a charge I knew I'd already paid. There was a smaller line item on that bill that I probably hadn't paid, but just through the magic of calling the phone number and sitting through hold, I was told not to pay anything.
iamthemonster 3y ago
American health insurance needs an additional layer of insurance where you pay in monthly and if you get sick a consultant with knowledge of health insurance coverage comes along and works out these things. Clearly you were mentally capable at the time, but many times people just get ripped off due to a combination of lack of understanding, will power or grief. The only other industry I can think of that waits until customers are at their most vulnerable before gouging for maximum profit is loan sharks.

Xorakios 3y ago

I left AMA once because I was fine but the hospital wanted my perfect insurance in Yuma, Arizona where most of the patients are uninsured immigrants. I understand that they need to money to survive but three weeks was just outrageous.

local_crmdgeon 3y ago
[flagged]
- LoganDark 3y ago
  It clearly did happen so those people are obviously wrong.
test77777 3y ago
[dead]

stevenicr 3y ago

I've witnessed several people AMA from hospitals. All of them were not being treated well for pain and even in cases where there were calls for psych staff to help - there was imo below minimal mental / emotional support given. In a couple of the cases the people were able to find better pain medicine on the street faster than they could even get a doctor to answer a nurses call to deny - and being able to find just one person who would listen or offer any other emotional support was better than what they got paying 10,000$ or whatever it is to stay in a luxurious beeping room. I'm talking about people with real pain - not a junkie looking for a fix. I believe these issues have been exasperated since 2019- it appears that most hospital staff is burn out and no longer fit for the job of handling stressed out, hurting people. 2 out of 3 hospitals around here have big signs all over the place stating they have zero tolerance for rude or abusive people. This policy itself is abused, and it's led to an even worse power dynamic / class war that is making hospitals worse for care, and sending more people to illicit pain management solutions. small data points. more does not equal all - ymmv.

jnovek 3y ago
I’m an anecdote, but I deal with chronic pain that is thankfully well-managed at the moment. When it wasn’t as well-managed my experience was that apathy among medical professionals was the norm and compassion was the exception. I’ve had particularly bad experiences in the ER and I’m reluctant to even go there anymore. There’s a whole performative thing you have to do at the ER to “demonstrate” that you’re not a drug seeker and it’s difficult for me because I am somewhat stoical in my expression of pain. I don’t know what’s wrong with the medical system that has created such apathy toward pain, but it feels like it goes beyond just concern over drug-seeking. It’s a critical problem.
- swayvil 3y ago
  >I don’t know what’s wrong with the medical system that has created such apathy toward pain I think it's that they are harassed 24-7 by addicts seeking drugs. A callous forms. If you are the legit rarity then so sorry. It's a problem with government policy that demonizes addicts and makes drugs hard to get. It's a problem with a pharmaceutical industry that seems to be playing games with supply and manufacturing. It's a problem with a medical industry that maximizes profits by hiring the smallest medical staff possible and running them ragged. It's a dog's dinner all around. In a better world we'd probably hang the bastards. But realistically, I guess what we need is more black-market drug manufacturers. Basement percocet labs. Backyard opium farms.

mutagen 3y ago

TIL Ishikawa fishbone root cause analysis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishikawa_diagram https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishikawa_diagram Of course I've seen them before but was struck by the interesting name.

zabzonk 3y ago

people want to be back in their own homes. i was in hospital a year ago (nhs, fractured ankle) and the guys in the whole ward i was on were literally desperate to get out of the place (which wasn't horrible, and i think the nhs is brilliant). it took me probably an extra week to get discharged that it needn't have done. but there is a lot of arse-covering going on.

adastra22 3y ago
Why didn’t they just leave? They’re not prisoners.
- zabzonk 3y ago
  no, they are not. but if you want to get continuing support, you need to go along with what the medics and ancillary staff are saying. for example, physiotherapy.
jeffbee 3y ago
> people want to be back in their own homes Seriously why are "bad food" and "noisy nurses" not on the list of reasons? People want to eat and sleep and if they feel like their acute medical problem is manageable I can see why they'd want to leave.
- hondo77 3y ago
  This. I was hospitalized for 12 days a couple months ago. At the end, I was going to leave if I wasn't discharged by a certain day because I couldn't take the food anymore. Fortunately, it didn't come to that but, my god, the food was horrible. And I'm not a fussy eater. I did my best to work with what I had, and had friends bring in food from the outside (I wasn't on any restrictions) but I finally reached the end of my rope.
  - zabzonk 3y ago
    ah, you should have spent 5 years at a british boarding school - after that, you will be able to eat and enjoy almost anything! the only things i really draw the line at are whelks and tripe. neither of which are normal hospital food.

docandrew 3y ago

Hospital - where they’ll wake you up to give you a sleeping pill.

kjhughes 3y ago

The shockingly low priority hospitals give to patient sleep might be a factor that the authors missed.

petsfed 3y ago
Seriously! When my first child was born, we stayed as long as possible, basically until the nurses more or less kicked us out. There was tons of support, and it was as pleasant an environment as I can easily imagine. For baby #2, the focus was 100% on getting the nurse and doctor through their appointed tasks. 14 hour old baby is actively nursing? Too bad, hand her over, its time to do the measurements. We got so fed up that we requested early checkout, was told "they'll be over in 5 minutes to do last-minute checkout", and after 45 minutes of waiting, we just left. Sometimes, I suspect "against medical advice" actually means "expected medical advice that was never actually delivered".
- kajecounterhack 3y ago
  They let you leave without checking out? Our hospital was very tight on security because baby identity verification is a whole thing.
  - petsfed 3y ago
    Instead of continuing to wait for the nurse doing their rounds, we went up to the nurse's station, stated our intent to leave, waived off all the "we really think you should stay", then they matched up the ID tags, cut them off, and away we went.
- Balgair 3y ago
  Pro tip for any spouses out there on that first night in the hospital: Tell the nurses to screw off if baby and mom are doing fine. We had a similar issue in that they would come around every hour and do 45 minutes of testing. Let mom and baby sleep and eat for a while, they've both been through a lot. Also, for the first timer's out there: Your normal rhythm of doing something hard and then going to relax and recoup is not how babies work. Like, you go climb a mountain, take a test, have a hard day at work. Then you go home and relax and recharge, right? That's not how a newborn works. The labor and delivery are the start of the 8-12 week long process of getting the newborn used to a day-night cycle and a feeding cycle. You really don't have any recouping or recharging time for the next 2-3 months. You don't have it after the 2-3 months either, but things get a bit calmer and you'll likely be sleeping more by then though. I don't want to scare you off parenthood, but let you know that the normal way of things is not how your life is going to go now.

annoyingnoob 3y ago

My father went through a crazy amount of medical care in a few short years. He checked himself out AMA twice. Once because the provider was an idiot and making him sicker. Another time so he could die at home instead of in the hospital where they couldn't really help him anyway.