Specialists

By

Obododimma Oha

It is not because they are heartless or want to hide something that the management of hospitals and clinics in some countries require those who have come along with patients on admission to sleep elsewhere instead of the wards. It is not because some nurses and doctors are agents of darkness - - although some may be - - that visiting hours are set and compliance is required from all, or that non-ward hands are not wanted around during ward rounds. It is not because hospitals and clinics do not really know it that they require outsiders to keep off patients they are treating when they do not like interactions.

Those who interact with patients under observation can be a great hinderance or interference sometimes. Outsiders may have their own ideas about the illness and may impose these, creating confusion or not allowing the legitimate therapies of doctors and nurses to have a way.

Each outsider can know the medicine and its dosage better, not to talk of alternative ones. Each peeping head may prophesy about the medication and confuse the patient. In that case, there could be  prescription and counter-prescription from many knowers treating the patient.

Of course, outsiders that consider themselves to be specialists can do some good. At least, they keep the real specialists on health on their toes : the real specialists, too, are being observed for effectiveness. They are under watch and have to be very careful. Doctors have the nurses as their watchers, even. So, they have to be very careful in handling that patient. 

We know that there are underlings that know so much and so a superior just has to learn few things from that junior who has  been there all these years. Looking down on the fellow or ignoring the advice given would not help matters. What more other colleagues who happen to fall low in rank. They, too, would want to show that they know and know more. It is better to check the rope one is climbing and to check it from time to time. 

Now, let us briefly return to ward hours and sharing time in the ward. The outsider that violates  ward hours, or precisely sleeps in, may forget that the situation is not the normal one. Outsiders may talk or answer phone calls in loud voices, startling or jolting patients who are already suffering. The food or eating, too, is not the normal one for patients to begin to have. What of noisy sleeping and noisy clearing of throat? Don't these disturb patients and increase their levels of suffering? In all, we see that the ward and its occupant are not the normal ones we know. Imposing normal ways on them is sheer punishment.

Specialists who accompany patients can be an obstacle. Indeed, they are also patients for clinics and hospitals to treat. They have come with problems and as problems, revealing an aspect to be dealt with, and what the real patient has been going through.

Specialists not only obstruct but also mislead. As "specialists," they know that particular case a lot, in fact, they know everything so much and do not need the prescription! You can see that specialists are very special people or special patients in this case. 

Specialists thus desire to direct doctors and nurses on what to do, being knowers. Have they not manifested an important symptom? I hope the laboratories can take the investigation from there. 

These days, it appears that almost everyone is a specialist on health matters. I should note this. 

These days that health matters to many in the world, do the periphery countries not exhibit some interesting characteristics? OK, just check the bank premises in Nigeria and see if you won't find some hawkers of aphrodisiacs. They know a lot! Some even carry pictures of an erect something doing something! They would approach those leaving or entering the bank to make them remember that one's health matters in talking about one's money! What of network marketers that invade the officers to sell products that make fallen empires to rise again? There seems to be a relationship there between wealth and health! 

Anyway, this is just a brief one about "experts" and how their inconveniences eventually work for good.  Healing would be total, after all, doctors and nurses treat but God heals.