A few months back I posted a "quick tangent" in the middle of one of my posts about how I hated the COVID restrictions I had to deal with when I took my son to the hospital. Recently I have had a lot more interactions with medical providers in general, and, honestly I wanted to write an entire post about how awful these restrictions have made the user experience for anyone interacting with medical providers.
First and foremost, a lot of the people in my family, myself included, deal with some level of mental illness. Depression is very common in my family, as well as anxiety, and other pathologies. This means that a number of people in my family interact on the regular with psychiatrists, therapists, and the like. Last year during the initial COVID reaction, most all (as far as I can tell) of these services went digital. People can now call, text, video chat, and the like. It's probably great for some people as it's super convenient or because they have other fears they're dealing with, but it really erases a human element to what I can only describe as one of the most human-centric forms of medicine.
Now, as I've said before, I understand that COVID is real and, while I might be able to look back now and say that the reaction last spring was too strong, I don't believe anyone in the moment would have said that, and I completely understand why services like these decided to go digital. They're important enough to keep up, even if seeing people in meat space is potentially super dangerous. The problem I'm having, though, is that was almost a year and a half ago now, and we have (or at least should have) a much different perspective of the virus now than we did then.
Most, if not all, medical professionals are likely vaccinated at this point, and if they're not, then that's entirely their choice and they better than anyone should understand the risks involved. Many individuals outside the medical field are also vaccinated, and again, if they're not, it's not because they don't have access to get the vaccine. Thus, I believe we're at a point (and probably have been for 2-3 months now) that anyone who wants to be vaccinated, has been, and we all just need to move on with our lives.
Here's the problem: medical professionals aren't. I have not met a single psychiatrist who is seeing patients in person that isn't working for an in-patient clinic. I see very few therapists seeing clients in person to this day. It's a major issue because, like me, many people find talking to a therapist over a video chat to be dehumanizing, demoralizing, or at the very least abjectly worse than seeing one in person. Like I said, you're missing a human element when you're talking to someone remotely. At the most basic, you can't even make eye contact with the person you're talking to. It's just absurd to think that, even now despite all that we know about COVID and despite the fact that 70+% of the population is vaccinated (especially including the therapist) that we can't see a therapist in person.
I can only speak anecdotally, but I'm curious how many people have stopped utilizing these very important tools right now because they're only able to see the resource digitally. We're in the middle of what's been described as the largest mental health crisis of our lifetimes, and the people at the front lines are too afraid to step up and actually meet with the people that need help the most.
Here's the most absurd example I can think of: a member of my family was being evaluated at a hospital for whether an in-patient clinic stay was necessary. The psychiatrist doing the evaluation refused to come into the room and would only speak via Zoom from his office. The nurse in the room had to hold up a tablet so the doctor could evaluate the patient from another room in the same building. I don't even know how to describe how infuriated I was by this.
This paranoia goes beyond mental health professionals, though. My brother-in-law's baby was born today. It's his first. I have been at the hospital for the birth of almost every one of my nieces and nephews, and those that I wasn't on-site for the birth I was able to see within hours after. I will not be able to see my new nephew today. The waiting rooms at the hospital are all closed. Visitors are restricted to incredibly small windows of time. Only one person is allowed in at once, and no one else is allowed in the building while that one person is in the room. So, if I want to visit, I have to wait in my car until the person currently visiting comes out to their car, then I can enter, be screened by the person at the door to make sure I don't have a fever (which, I really want to go off on another tangent about but I'll stop with this tiny rant), then walk all the way to the maternity ward. Given the distance from the visitor parking lot to the maternity ward and the really small visitor window, there's enough time for maybe 2-3 people to see the baby if everyone spends 15 minutes or so in the room with the parents. Thus, I won't be able to see my nephew today as we've all agreed that the grandparents should be given the ability to see the new baby first. I might get to see him tomorrow if I'm lucky.
This waiting room paranoia goes beyond just maternity wards. When I went to see my own doctor last month I was forced to wait in my car and allow them to call me when the room was ready. When my wife goes to see her OBGYN for her routine prenatal visits, she has to wait in the car. I wasn't even allowed in to those visits with her until late last month after the governor of our state reduced the COVID restrictions finally. I didn't miss a single appointment with my first son, but I only just got to hear the heartbeat for the first time at the new baby's 20 week ultrasound. When we took my family member to the hospital for evaluation, no one was allowed in the waiting room, and the ER waiting area was literally empty. I sat in the car and watched a woman in her own car bleeding into a rag that she was holding up to her forehead for 20 minutes before she went in to get stitches.
Only an industry that people literally rely on for their health and wellbeing could be as callous and heartless as most medical facilities are being right now in the name of safety from COVID, a virus that more than 70% of the population is vaccinated against. I doubt I'm alone in saying that I've avoided seeing a doctor in over a year because of how poorly offices are treating patients. I don't know what to do about it, though, because, as I said, we all rely on doctors and hospitals for treatment every now and then, but it's infuriating to be treated so poorly by the staff of these facilities simply for existing and coming in to the facility in person.
When can we move on with our lives?
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