Thoughts about Waiting Rooms

It would be staggering to know how much time is totally LOST each week as people sit in hospital waiting rooms. I had many chances to observe last week what goes on in these places, or more like what doesn’t.

My appointments at Washington Hospital Center were spread between a lab and the Department of Nuclear Medicine. In both places I observed people just totally shutting down as they waited for whatever would happen next.

The lab area had nondescript Musak playing in the background. After signing in, the patients would sit down and just become comatose, while not actually falling asleep. No one read a book. No one read a magazine. No one brought anything to do. No one talked. They just sat there in silence and waited for their name to be called out.

I was quite the exception. Since I have to wait a while after I take my morning Synthroid pill to eat, I brought my breakfast – cereal and milk and proceeded to eat it while I waited for my call for bloodwork. One older man in a wheelchair asked his wife why he couldn’t have brought his breakfast too, upon which I offered to share and he declined. I also brought the remaining placemats which still needed the final handwork to finish them off. A woman actually broke the silence to ask me about what I was making.

The Nuclear Medicine waiting room is somewhat different. The patients are still silent and unprepared to do anything but wait. But the background sound is Judge Judy or Rachel Ray or whatever talk show is on. I’m convinced there must be one every hour.

For many of the people sitting in waiting rooms, it is much easier to shut down than it is to contemplate what has happened or what is going to happen. Some of them are terminally ill. Some of them are struggling to cope with serious health conditions.

The exchange with the receptionist is not exactly uplifting either. In Nuclear Medicine, their first question is “When were you diagnosed?” meaning “When did you get cancer?” I always want to say, “I HAD thyroid cancer 2 years ago, but I don’t have it any longer.” It’s obviously much easier to tune out than to think about why you are there.

I wish someone would give me the project of designing a better way for people to spend all this time – a way they could be busy and productive and engaged instead of repressed. I’m convinced there are alternatives to what we find everywhere we currently go for medical attention.