Things I've noticed while visiting the ICU
I&#x27;m a nurse and I find the 7th point on the post especially relevant. I will add a disclaimer that I never worked in the ICU so I can&#x27;t speak for what happens in that type of unit.<p>There is a serious issue with the flow of information in healthcare, (or at least in the U.S, I never worked elsewhere to know if it&#x27;s any different). But If you find something during your shift which will be important to know later on, it will certainly be lost as soon as you are off for a few days, or even as soon as a new nurse comes on. To think of a somewhat crude example, if you find out that it is much easier to obtain a blood sample from the veins on the left arm of a patients vs the right, many nurses will still stick the right arm countless times hoping to get something.<p>And you can leave a chart note about things like that or speak about it during report, but for the most part few people will think &quot;hm, I wonder what everybody else had to deal with.&quot; They are probably too busy handling a thousand different things happening all at once. And, even if that is not the case, from what I observed it&#x27;s simply not part of how things are done. And very often patients will get (justifiably) angry, saying &quot;I&#x27;ve been complaining of x thing for days!&quot; or some version of that. I think it would be much better for both patients and healthcare staff alike if there was a greater emphasis placed on focusing on the series of successes and failures that happen over the course of someone&#x27;s care, not just seeing it as a single shift or a single problem happening in some isolated point in time.