Tupeak Hope

NaNoWriMo 2019 season is in full swing as we sit at our local diner and kick things off with our midnight write-in.

Things have been a touch crazy of late around here with health challenges, consulting obligations, and even starting a new job of late. I have to say it feels great to be sitting with my friends and taking, or should I say making, the time to write despite the aforementioned challenges to my time management skills.

It seems to me that as the local health networks continue to expand their footprint as they naturally do with growth, that accountability for their actions often seems to be forgotten. It is often replaced with the platitudes similar to “I’m not sure why that happened to you” as opposed to actually investigating a situation to determine where the system failed and preventing it from happening again.

Here is just one such example that is still an ongoing saga to which I devoted about 40 minutes on the phone again today trying to get to the bottom of it and was basically told that while it made no sense that these things happened, there’s nothing they can do to prevent it in the future. This is entirely unacceptable and as patients or more bluntly as consumers, we deserve better. It’s time we find a way to work together and open the lines of communication between providers and patients to increase accountability and awareness of issues when they arise, as they often will, because no health system or business, for that matter, are perfect or infallible.

So today I come home from my second overnight sleep study in three weeks with more questions than answers. To say I am frustrated, confused, and even a bit defeated would all be accurate. This may seem confusing when you read why below, but I promise to make sense of it. It’s important to keep in mind that medicine is rarely simple and especially for those of us with multiple or complex medical conditions it gets increasingly complicated.

Hello all! It’s been a crazy few weeks with lots of stuff going on behind the scenes here at Tupeak Hope. The planning stages for becoming an official non-profit have begun and networking is well under way in order to attempt to garner support and of course funding in order to make this happen sooner rather than later.

I am committed to making this dream become a reality in order to help bridge the gaps between patients and providers as well as to become a resource through which the proper services can be connected with those that need it most and may not be aware of how to find resources in their area of need.

Professionalism goes a very long way in patient relationships. Even if you don’t feel compassion, sympathy or empathy for your patients the fact that healthcare is a business and good business requires good customer service, I strongly suggest you learn how to at least fake it and fake it well. Openly doodling and blatantly leaving it for your patient to find does not instill a sense of professionalism a provider should hope for.