2023-05-26 23:51:38
health
“Patients in the ICU become the object of medical study, but they forget about their emotional needs,” said a renowned doctor and neurosurgeon.
26/5/2023
Hernán Darío Estrada Londoño was a renowned doctor and neurosurgeon from the University of Antioquia who spent a good part of his career in Medellín. A man who, when “they called him to lend a hand, was already busy giving both”, as Óscar Domínguez evoked in a column published in The Colombian.
For decades he dedicated himself to the study of the mysteries of the human brain and as a neurosurgeon he had to face delicate cases with his patients. But the disease, which does not distinguish professions, led him one day to be on the other side, to make him a patient. In a very serious
Due to aggressive colon cancer, this doctor was not only forced to close the office where he had practiced all his life, but also began a long journey through different specialists and also several Intensive Care Units (ICUs), in which paradoxically He lived firsthand the harsh experience of being a patient with a complicated health condition and the way in which health services are provided in some Colombian healthcare centers.
Dr. Estrada Londoño himself, shortly before he died, circulated a moving and painful message among colleagues and friends that several of them have replicated in recent days through their social networks and WhatsApp groups, in which this dapper specialist complains about the dehumanization that, according to his account, is experienced in many ICUs.
“I am another after being four times in the ICU. The medical results do not compensate for the irreparable damage in the psychological sphere. I am no longer Hernán Darío Estrada, I am what is left of him ”, the deceased doctor began commenting.
“You don’t know what a bath is like at five in the morning shivering with cold! I asked: why didn’t they change my position every two hours? And I heard the taunts. It is a hostile place. With noises due to device alarms and inappropriate conversations and laughter,” the doctor said sadly before his death.
And he described in detail to his colleagues the feelings experienced by patients in these intensive care units: “Patients have anguish, anxiety, insomnia, fear and fear of death. They easily label us psychotic.”
Towards the end of her story, however, she highlighted the role that nurses play in these spaces: “I rescue the angels, the nurses (the vast majority). They are doctors (they explain why), family, confidants and friends. They cry with one. They hardly sit down, while the Gods of Olympus do not move from their throne and their toy, the computer.
“Patients in the ICU become the object of medical study, but they forget about emotional needs,” he expressed with pain.
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