Holding someones hand

[Ridryder911]

I have to admit there are some times that I do not care for "certain" patients to grab, touch, or hug me. It is not the "personal" or even having feelings of apathy, rather some of the patients are not the best in " hygiene" and being clean. I know that sounds very egotistical and definitely non-Christian like, but again it is not the person rather ,I have had B.O. smell, perfume smells left on my uniform for my duration of my shift or until I can change.

With that saying, I am seeing more and more medics entering the field that have no desire to touch the patient except in the care. I do find this odd since we are supposed to be the first medical care. This is where the debate begins.... does providing medical care require and encompass compassion and just how much does that encounter?

Ironically, in nursing I believe it is naturally assumed that touching, intimate closeness other than the brief touch of procedure(s) is part of the job. I do find it ironic, many of these "non-touchy" medics are considering going into the nursing profession. When addressed they still remark, they do not feel comfortable touching or being touched. I do not believe they understand that the main emphasis of nursing is the "human touch". That it is usually the difference between physician and other medical care. That skills and texts places emphasis on touching the patient, be it in stroking the hair, washing the face or holding the hand of a patient. In fact this is one of the concerns that nurses have of "increased work load", that does not allow them to give the humanistic care needed while being ill and increasing psyche needed for resistance.

Yes, it has been proven several times that "human touch" definitely has benefits in decreasing stress, increasing antibodies, resistance, and improving out come. Many are familiar with scientific studies performed several years ago, involving neonates where there was non-touched versus those that received stroking and touching. The results was over-whelming in those that received "touch" in comparison of that did not.

Maybe, part of our curriculum should have to be increased "touching" on skills, or as I have emphasized screening of applicants on admission to any EMS program describing that part of requirements is "touching people". This is shameful, but does need to be addressed.

I believe we are addressing a hidden problem that EMS applauds to ignore. Again, until we attempt to screen applicants based upon multiple points we will continue to have this increasing problem.

R/r 911

 

[Glorified]

I'm not gonna bother to read 10 more pages of this thread, but I see no problem in providing emotional support. If someone's mind is at rest, their body can more easily compensate.

 

[bstone]

I had a PT last summer who held my hand. She has horrible leg pain and we were BLS so no narcs. Just a ride to the ER and a scream every time we hit a bump in the road.

I sat in the back with her feeling helpless, but then she grabbed onto my hand and held it tight. I felt it was the LEAST I could have done for her and it turned out to be one of my most memorable patients.

 

[Guardian]

Guardian,
it doesn't really matter which potus we blame, the two party oligarghy we exist in is simply a two headed hyra that instigates a fight among itself as a diversion

It's fun to think that big business is secretly controlling the world and use republicans and democrats as a diversion. In reality, I think it's just a popular conspiracy theory.

besides, beyond the hanout/handup argument, isn't the true measure of any governance how it's citizens fare?

especially it's young and old?

i say our health care systems a shambles, a disgrace, a failure to all Americans except that top echelon bleeding the life out of us

the "top echelon" is keeping it alive, it's all the rest of us who are bleeding the life out of it. Ford motor company spends more on health care than it does on buying parts for its vehicles and we wonder why they scramble to leave our country and outsource.

this part here Firetender, this is on mark here....

corporatism is the disease of unbridled capatalism firetender. we actually have the Lamborghini or health care systems, but everyone i know drives a Chevy....

solutions? market based is the usual turn of such debates, but a capatalist system can only present a capatalistic rx, otherwise it'd be socialist ,would it not?

meet the new boss folks...

Corporatism is a good thing in my opinion. Why?...because we control corporations by choosing to either spend money or not spend money on their products. We give them their power and we can take it away if they don't cater to our needs. Is the alternative socialism or god forbid communism, yes, and that is power we would have no control over.

 

[Guardian]

By itself, holding someones hand can be a good thing. The real issue here is the shocking number of adults who are stupid, immature, whinny babies who can't take care of themselves. After working in ems, i have realized how many of these people there are and it scares me. To me, its un-American and is a cancer to our society. A "pt" asking me to hold their hand for some B.S. reason represents the epitome of this cancerous culture. Why?...because it shows they are so used to relying on "authority" to comfort them, they have no shame when it comes to seeking it. They expect it. More and more are growing up in this culture and it's becoming the norm to many people. They're like drug addicts who become dependent on our system. They become nothing more than leeches and stop contributing. They become a cancer and what do we do? We offer to hold their hands and pamper them. This is only making it worse. I guess it's all a matter of perspective though...I work in a city with a huge dependency problem that some of you have never and will never see. And what do some want to do to fix the problem? Increase government handouts...this makes no sense to me.

 

[BossyCow]

I do think there are times when people need to grow up and stop expecting us to give them the attention they never got from mommy and daddy. I also think we should stop encouraging this behavior which is what we do every time we gratuitously hold their hands.

Gratuitously? I've found that holding a pt's hand can lower their anxiety level considerably. Which lowers h/r, b/p, slows respirations and generally calms the pt. A calm pt is better able to give me an accurate report of symptoms, hx, and makes my job so much easier.

I think we become so familiar with the back of our rigs that we don't realize what a scary place it can be. We treat people, not body systems and need to look at relating to the person in the emergency as part of giving care.

I don't see holding a patient's hand as an unreasonable demand of me, nor beneath my skill level. I do not see a pt's need to connect with me as a human being as a weakness or an attempt to take something from me.

In unfamiliar surroundings, a smile, a handshake, and a shared joke can go a long way towards making the experience a positive one, instead of one that makes the pt want to call the agency supervisor or your lawyer.

 

[firetender]

In Hawaii, we say "Mahalo!" for thank you

Y'ever seen the movie Sullivan's Travels, Guardian, my Braddah?

It's older than you because it's older than me.

A top-notch Hollywood director of high-falutin' comedies wants to make a serious movie, so he becomes a Hobo and hits the rails. It's the Depression. At first, he's followed everywhere by an absurd entourage of publicists and accountants and barbers and the like, but one day, he gets smacked by a cop, looses his memory and, homeless, turns into one of "them." The movie comes full circle when, after regaining his "senses" he goes back to Hollywood, but it's to make lowbrow comedies for the people, because that's what they need and want. He knows this now, for he has become one of them.

The point is, the guy got smacked in the head, lost all sense of who he was -- and whom he THOUGHT he was – and, responding to the world he lived in now, moment to moment, became one of the rabble that he wouldn't have spit on before he got knocked on the noggin.

But he started as a storyteller and the stories he once told were of the world he knew, from the POV of his experience within that world. He was a man in control in that world. But then, something got switched -- in an instant -- and he ended up learning that given the proper circumstances, he could become that which he despised.

Given the proper circumstances, he could become that which he despised. In an instant. Who amongst us has even seen that happen as much as you?

Is it possible that you have NOT had the experience of saying to yourself, "Lord, if I had to put up with the same kinds of circumstances that guy had to, I'd (fill-in-the-blank) too!"?

With your time in the field, I can't imagine it. It doesn’t have to happen too often before you get the sense, “Yeah, maybe this is part of being human, we ARE shaped by our environment as much as we shape it.”

I’ll add to this that had I been your partner through all the calls you ran, in all the areas you covered, during all the times you were called on to act, I’d probably be tossing down a beer with you and ranting and laughing about the dopey wimp who reached his snot-encrusted hand to me for reassurance.

By all means, be who you are and I cannot deny you the validity of your experience, but if you look back in detail on your medic experience you will invariably find (challenge me on this, please!) that incident by incident you began shellacking yourself with a thin coat to insulate yourself from the trauma of living in the world you’ve chosen to live in. Today, you have such a thick, accumulated coat built on you, you can hardly bend!

You, yourself Guardian are a lesson in compassion in action for everyone on this site. Because there’s few Rookies out there who picture themselves as unfeeling and uncaring as you sometimes appear to be, and fewer still that believe that they’ll end up like you. Yet, everyone who responds to this thread fears that “There but for fortune…” they will become you, because they know you’re speaking the truth about the profession they’ve entered.

I was just going to write, “But they haven’t lost the fight!”

How arrogant and judgmental of ME! Because when I read your thread I can see that you’re still in there, like the rest of us, struggling with knowing some of these *******s DO weasel their ways into your heart, sometimes, you do reach out to a patient, and sometimes you do shed a tear over someone else’s pain, no matter how trivial it seems.

Why else would you start this thread by boldly announcing, “No more hand-holding!” and then following it with “What do you think?” Could you not project that that was the burp that would start the avalanche? You knew damn well!

You want to examine yourself, and be affected by others, and especially by your peers who live in the same world you do (albeit, probably less extreme.). You have NOT made up your mind because you DID reach out. And, no, that does NOT make you a wimp!

I would encourage you to put as much energy into working through your challenges with heartlessness as you spend trying to justify your stance with those of us who haven’t sat beside you in your ambulances. And then...teach us.

I can’t emphasize enough that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with you. You are so honestly reflecting a stream that truly exists and something that really does live in each and every one of us. But the opposite lives inside each and every one of us as well. Neither can exist without the other.

This struggle is part and parcel of the territory of being a human being who chooses to live on the line between life and death, and I thank you for bringing it up!

What if, in this thread, you shared with us a moment that flipped you toward that shellac bucket, but because you saw a smidgen of yourself in the patient or the circumstances, chose to put down the brush? How is it that you can teach us about your struggles in retaining your own humanity?

I hate to burst your bubble in public, Guardian, but you have managed to accomplish this.

 

[mfrjason]

I did it all the time when I was in the back of the ambulance with a patient,it makes them feel more comfortable,especially after a traumatic event (i.e.-auto accident). There is nothing wrong with holding a patient's hand.

 

[firetender]

…and on the Societal Front…

Guardian suggests that it is the poor that are causing the problems for the rest of us, somehow moving difficulties up and up until the Government gets hobbled by them.

Very cool. That’s the first time I’ve heard the “Trickle-UP” theory!

Actually, I’m lying, because I used to watch Archie Bunker on ALL IN THE FAMILY.

The history of innovation, creation, conquest and progress in our world is quite the opposite. There are a privileged few, at the top of the proverbial food chain, who live in a world fueled by the illusion that they are insulated from the troubles or inconveniences of life. Illusion is the operative word, and who knows that better than us?

But in order to reinforce that illusion, in fact, to make it stronger, they employ any one they can, in any way that they can get away with, to take on the burdens of life so that they don’t have to. It’s really not a conspiracy or a 666 mark or anything ill-concieved, it’s part of the animal that lives inside the human.

Near the bottom of the food chain are us. What do you think we’re doing? We’re holding the hands of the people they won’t touch because those hands are too dirty from the work that’s being done to keep the privileged few on top of the food chain!

Problems, especially economic problems, trickle DOWN, not UP! The problems of society -- the breakdown of family structure, the costly institutionalization of medicine, the widening gap between rich and poor and the squeezing of the middle class - have their deepest impact on the poor and are generated by the moves that the privileged few take to further insulate themselves from pain and suffering.

Somebody’s got to experience the pain, there is no Yin without Yang, Heads without Tails, Dark without Light!

It is not the poor whose behavior determines the health of the greater society; it is the health of the greater society that determines the behavior of the poor. That behavior happens in the extremes because the culture of the poor consists of living a life responding to doors closing, whereas the upper economic levels' lives are geared toward the exploitation of the doors that are opening.

...as long as there's someone on a lower level acting as a doorstop.

 

[Guardian]

Problems, especially economic problems, trickle DOWN, not UP! The problems of society -- the breakdown of family structure, the costly institutionalization of medicine, the widening gap between rich and poor and the squeezing of the middle class - have their deepest impact on the poor and are generated by the moves that the privileged few take to further insulate themselves from pain and suffering.

Can you expound this with some examples of how the rich elite are breaking family structure, institutionalizing medicine, etc. I am genuinely curious how you came to this conclusion.

At the turn of the century, our standard of living went way up because of industrialization. Our middle class exploded because of industrialization. But now, big business (rich elite) are being blamed for the above social problems. Why? Wouldn't the rich elite stand to make more money from a stronger middle class? Right now the rich elite are paying for the healthcare of the lower class. Why would they want to do this?

As far as my humanity is concerned, it's really easy to make me out to be a heartless monster. But am I really? I want these people to be independent. Feeding their dependency is not going to help them, it we only hurt them. Maybe the hand holders of the world are creating this dependency.

 

[BossyCow]

Feeding their dependency is not going to help them, it we only hurt them. Maybe the hand holders of the world are creating this dependency.

There is a huge difference between 'feeding their dependency' and acknowledging that we are all humans together. How is the simple act of holding someone's hand 'feeding their dependency'? Allowing the pt to see us as human beings capable of compassion doesn't mean they have manipulated us into being their emotional IV's.

We've all had the emotional black holes as patients, but this is not a valid reason in my perspective to withold all contact with all other pt's wanting some reassurance

 

[mfrjason]

I was on this one call where this lady was involved in a PI and since there was 3 of us on the call I sat in back and held her hand all the way to the hospital just cuz it was the right thing to do,she was severly freaked out about what had happened that I think it made her feel better to hold onto my hand while my partner was treating her. We had her as a patient again a few days later cuz she had taken too much of her meds,she lived thank god.

 

[firetender]

Can you expound this with some examples of how the rich elite are breaking family structure, institutionalizing medicine, etc. I am genuinely curious how you came to this conclusion.

....

As far as my humanity is concerned, it's really easy to make me out to be a heartless monster. But am I really? I want these people to be independent. Feeding their dependency is not going to help them, it we only hurt them. Maybe the hand holders of the world are creating this dependency.

#1 I'm speaking in terms of overall flow pointing to the direction rather than the specifics. I'm mostly off-line for a week, but will see if I can illustrate this better. AND, it's not my desire to get in political debate, just supply food for thought...take as you will!

#2 Making you out to be a heartless monster is as counterproductive as writing anyone else off about anything. Face the real Guardian, I say, and you'll find lots of heart!