Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with hospitals

Emergency medicine in 1920

asockpuppet — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 18:34:02 -0800

I am a 40 year old man that died of a skull fracture in August, 1920. I was brought to the city hospital of our large metropolitan area by my brother. I died later that night. Cause of my skull trauma is unknown. What was my medical treatment like? What was the education and medical training of my doctors? How sterile was the hospital? What drugs would I have been treated with? What happened to my body and family when I died?

Asking because a former resident of the house I now own many years later died this way.

Help me realize my counseling career dreams!

GarotaDaCidade — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 06:53:23 -0800

I want to be a counselor in clinics and/or hospitals. What degree do I need to get? I have a B.S. in psychology. My main interests lie in "behavioral medicine"- the clinical side, not the research side. I want to be a counselor for people with chronic illnesses like HIV, but I also want to live comfortably (and by that I mean never worrying about being able to cover basic needs- I don't need to drive an aston martin).

Originally I thought PhD, but I'm not sure whether hospitals or clinics even hire PhDs to do counseling outside of psych wards, and I'm not so excited about research OR 6 years of school. Then I thought social work, but I feel like I would be locked into a job with a very low salary cap for the rest of my life. I have also thought about a PsyD, or a masters in counseling, etc. etc., but I don't know very much about what kinds of opportunities those degrees will afford.

I have extensive internship and work experience in this area (mostly with MDs who unfortunately can't really answer my questions about psychology careers), and I have taken the GREs (regular and psych), so I feel like getting into a school won't be that terrible for me- it's just a question of picking what school to go to.

Any kind of advice would be greatly appreciated- after going back and forth over so many options, I am at a real loss here.

What should I expect when seeking inpatient mental health treatment?

Anonymous — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 12:51:06 -0800

What happens if you check into an inpatient psychiatric facility in Maryland/ Washington/ Virgina? I'm considering seeking inpatient treatment for depression. I'm not on the brink of suicide or anything, but I'm afraid of getting to that point... I'm scared and depressed and confused and overwhelmed and thinking I probably should not be alone all weekend.

If I check myself in to a hospital:
-will I be able to choose when I leave? (On what basis could I be forced to stay?)
-will I be forced to take whatever medication is prescribed, or will I have some control over my treatment?
-are some hospitals "better" than others? (I would be grateful for specific recommendations in the DC metro area.)
-am I overlooking other options? Is there some kind of emergency outpatient counseling I could get?

Thank you in advance.

Books on asylums

shwynn2 — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 14:56:33 -0800

Help me find books about insane asylums/state hospitals. I'm looking for some interesting books on the subject of asylums/mental hospitals from the 1700s-1920s in the U.S. and England. I prefer non-fiction, but wouldn't mind some very fact-heavy fiction.

Cataracts!??

bluejayk — Mon, 14 May 2007 12:51:00 -0800

I think I have a cataract. I'm 30 years old, and I live in China. What now? So, I had LASIK 5 years ago. There were complications. My eyes are naturally dry, and the surgery seems to have made the condition worse, so that my eyes tend to be red and itchy, unless I take very good care of them, or even when I do sometimes.

So I've gotten used to having bloodshot eyes, and it makes my left eye (the one more prone to redness and irritation) bother me on occasion. This last week, it started to bother me a lot, but I figured it was due to seasonal allergies, or using the computer too much, or something. I used a hot compress, which is about the only thing I can do to make it better outside of living in a cool, clean climate.

But my left eye continued to hurt and the last few days I noticed some occassional extreme sensitivity to light. This is unusual and today when looking in the mirror I noticed a little cloudy spot over the iris, which coincides with an area of blurred vision I had assumed was just caused by general irritation. So I looked online about cataracts, and it seems to likely to be a cataract, despite my relative youth.

Obviously, this is not a qualified diagnosis. But I'm really at a loss what I'm gonna do about it. If it is a cataract, it seems the only way to get rid of it is surgery. Well, I live in China, and I don't have health insurance. I don't have much in the way of savings, so to fly back to America to have surgery would require credit card debt. Surgery in China... uhm. Maybe. Surgery in Hong Kong? Surgery in Thailand? All the websites I found were about cosmetic surgery, so I'm not sure where I fit in.

I guess I'll be seeing a doctor in the next day or two, but in the mean time if anyone can point me to good resources about cataracts, overseas health care, or anything else, it'd be great. I'm kinda freakin out, cause I think of cataracts as something people get in their 70's.

Is there a doctor in the house?

Nathanial Hörnblowér — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 08:28:16 -0800

Listening to this story about hospital interns on NPR yesterday got me thinking about the practice of interns and residents working around the clock. What is the purpose of this? Is there a shortage of interns in this country that they need to work 80 hours a week? Or does this schedule supposedly prepare them for life as a physician? I know physicians are on call from time to time, but is it realistic to think they'd be working 24 hour days back to back on a regular basis? As the NPR story points out, what about the safety of the patients the interns are treating *now*? Is there a doctor here could can shed some light, or are they all too busy working to read MeFi?

Where can I find comparative performance data for US Hospitals?

jeb — Tue, 05 Jul 2005 22:06:00 -0800

Where can I find rankings or ratings of US hospitals? I want to know how good or bad "Ocean Medical Center" in Brick, NJ is, particulary as it compares to nearby hospitals (I realize it probably varies by specialty or procedure; ideally I'd like the data broken down appropriately). Googling for the hospital name with any kind of descriptive returns junk and press releases from the company that owns the hospital.

Nurse's Codes?

kev23f — Mon, 05 Jan 2004 03:58:57 -0800

You know the chart they hang on the end of hospital beds? Apparently there's a myth that nurses put 2 letter codes on these that describe the characteristics of the patient that annoy/irritate/disgust them most. Has anyone heard of these?