Selfishness costs us all

[okarol]

Editorial

Selfishness costs us all
Posted 17 hours ago

It was disturbing to see yet another example of how selfish and uncaring one person can be in the face of need by others.

While recently watching the national news, I was exposed to an item regarding the rescheduling of patients undergoing kidney dialysis treatment.

The hospital had posted a simple schedule change affecting patients scheduled for treatment on Easter Monday to receive their treatment on Easter Sunday instead. This would result in a reduction in overtime payments to staff of about $40,000 for the day.

The announcer pointed out this could happen four or five times a year. A quick calculation reveals that with this change the hospital could hire another three or four nurses.

The patient whose normal schedule called for treatments on Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Monday would now be scheduled for treatments on Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday for one week and then revert to the normal schedule until another statutory holiday rolled around on a Monday. His complaint was that he would not be with his family for a few hours on Easter Sunday.

He has busied himself getting a petition signed by other affected patients in an effort to stop the rescheduling of dialysis treatments on Easter Monday. He was more concerned with missing four or five hours of family time on four or five Sundays a year than seeing a way for the hospital to hire three or four more nurses within the constraints of their existing budget.

This simple change could have a major impact on the provision of more timely treatment for hundreds of other patients in an emergency receiving ward, or in some other ward where high levels of nursing care are required.

His attitude seems to be, I'm OK Jack, and I don't care about you!

R. McClelland

Welland

http://www.wellandtribune.ca/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=963023

[stauffenberg]

The real selfishness is not to be found in the poor patient, who is just trying to preserve as much of the remnants of a normal life as he can amidst the ravages of dialysis, or the hospital, which is trying to do the most good with the limited funds at its disposal, but is in the selfish taxpayers who refuse to fund medical care adequately for the sick, so that hospital resource conservation does not have to deny patients a more normal life.