The Need for Care in Healthcare

Today I worked as an actor.  My stage was a hospital bed, my audience: nurses, x-ray techs and repository therapists in training.  I played a thirty year old construction worker (hey don't laugh, I once helped frame a house), who had fallen off a roof and is now paralyzed from the waist down.  I had been in the hospital for 4 weeks, had a catheter, feeding tube, breathing tube, and was becoming anxious.

I was given two tasks: have a respiratory issue, which would require breathing tube adjustment, some

therapy and a chest x-ray; the second issue was less physical, and more "spiritual".  The person in charge of the simulation asked me to ask about my condition, and how my life was going to change.  Some of the questions were about if my condition was permanent, another one was about how long I had to be in the hospital, if I could use the bathroom on my own, if I could have sex, and other questions like that to make the nursing staff uncomfortable.

How they were trained to answer left me saddened.  Not that they did anything wrong.  Nurses, x-ray techs, and repository therapists are trained to deal with our physical aliments, and the questions, they would defer to other people.  When I asked about my condition, they would check to make sure my brain was operating correctly.  They would ask if the doctor had already explained these things to me.

Often the nurses would reassure me that a social worker, psychiatrist, or chaplain would help me with my issues, as they walked out and closed the door behind them.  I am sure that these professionals can and do help tremendously in these situations, but as I laid there, I thought, if this was real what would I really need?

I needed someone to cry with me, to be with me, to love me as I am and not as I should be.  In short, someone who could demonstrate the love of Christ and step into my situation.  Someone to be weak with me, there were enough people around me "being strong".  Some one who could care about me, not for me.

As the simulation ended, before getting up, I prayed for those who will not get up from that bed.  I was reminded that "Christ sometimes cures, but He always heals".  And as Christians we are called to "weep with those who weep" and to demonstrate what it truly means to be human: To be like a Christ and step into other's pain and suffering, for no other reason that just to be with them and love them.