Carol Ross Williamson offers a thoughtful review of Sholom Glouberman's new book 'My Operation' for The Record, a Waterloo Region newspaper.
My Operation: A Health Insider Becomes a Patient
by Sholom Glouberman
(Self-published, 183 pages, $19.95 softcover)
Most of us will be a patient in our health care system at some time in our lives, so it’s imperative we know how to make the best of the experience. This book by Canadian health policy analyst Sholom Glouberman will help us to do just that.
When Glouberman entered a Toronto hospital to have a colectomy (removal of part of the large intestine), he expected the best. But the problems that ensued were a real eye-opener and led him to start asking questions.
Glouberman, 70, was able to get hold of his medical files and piece together what went wrong. And a big part of the problem, he concluded, resulted from him letting the doctors make decisions and not speaking up more.
When you’re a patient, Glouberman writes, “it is easy not only to become dependent, but also to hand over much of our decision-making to people we trust.
“And doctors are professionally meant to be such trustworthy people. We want them to be there for us when we are ill, not only because they know more about such things than we do, but also because they can and do assume a big part of the responsibility for our health since we are too anxious or too sick to do so ourselves.â€
It’s interesting to note that a few years ago Glouberman gave a talk at The King’s Fund in England (a health-care organization) in which he discussed the three classes of patients found in Canada and England.
First-class patients, he said, include family members of doctors and their colleagues, plus celebrities and other “select†individuals; Second-class patients are people from the same middle-class group; Third-class patients are people below the middle class, people who rely on emergency clinics or hospital emergency rooms for health care, and people who have trouble communicating.
Glouberman had considered himself in the first-class group earlier, when he wasliving in Montreal. But even with all of his years in the medical community, things still went wrong for him at Toronto General Hospital. Reviewing reports about his case later, he learned about problems he had not even been informed about — including that his appendix had been removed during the operation and that he had a condition that could lead to a serious infection.
After gathering information and interviewing doctors and health care officials, Glouberman began working with others to improve the patient experience.
After many meetings, the Patients’ Association of Canada (http:patientsassociation.ca) was born. It held an inaugural conference this week in Toronto. Glouberman is the president.
What Glouberman went through was frightening for him and his entire family, but he has used the experience to improve the patient-medical team relationship across Canada. His book is informative and descriptive. A glossary explains the medical terms that are used in the text and charts.
It’s interesting to note that Glouberman’s wife was by his side day and night in the hospital and that the medical staff made note of this in their reports.
It’s a good lesson that it’s wise to have someone watching out for us, even if it isn’t an expert.
This article was originally published here.