A truly sad case of a stroke victim and his family’s conflict with the hospital:
Family members, on the other hand, argued in court filings that their actions were mischaracterized.The guardian won. By court order, family members can visit only with Partners in Care’s consent. They can’t discuss health care with doctors or nurses, or even Medvedev himself. Nor can they mention the court battle. To make sure they follow the rules, Anna and Andrei are prohibited from speaking with him in Russian, their native language.
For more than a month, Partners in Care did not authorize a visit. Some of that time, Medvedev was in an “undisclosed location for ongoing health care needs and protection,” court files state.
Friends were barred from visiting, because of their ties to the family.
When visits were finally allowed, family members had to hire someone to supervise them. That costs up to $300 each time.
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This is truly sad. I think we’ve all dealt with difficult family members, although if this story is mostly true this family is pretty extreme. I can’t see how this ends well.
SUPER-GENERALIZATION AHEAD: I did my internship at a hospital with a large Russian patient population. Whether it was their culture, or just the specific subset of patients I saw, they were some of the most demanding and irritating patients I have ever had. Their families were often equally bad. Thus, I am not totally surprised by this article. That said, this is only my experience. Please do not think that I am against the Russian people, and all that garbage.
I don’t think the above comment is at all inaccurate. I have a fair percentage of eastern Bloc immigrants, and their approach to health care is quite dramatic. The pain is always incapacitating, the explannation never applies to them, they request MRI’s/ CT etc over and over, often for no injury, no abnormality. I think the cultural difference may indeed be a learned reliance upon someone else to take care of all of your needs, and when we deny things, I am often told on appeals by these members that “this was all taken care of back home- whats wrong with this country” or something similar.
Huge culture differences here.
Well, I grew up in Russia, and I certainly don’t demand tests (although in hindsight, I wonder if I should’ve asked a blood test to check my estradiol/FSH levels when I started to have 2- and 3- months delays in periods while still in my early 30s).
I may refuse certain tests, but I certainly never demand CTs or MRIs. Neither do I run to a doctor for every minor thing – last time I saw my PCP was 2 years ago, and so far I had no “incapacitating” pain. I’d imagine my grandmother had incapacitating pain when she was dying from cancer, and I don’t think any discomfort I have experienced came close to that.
My parents, on the other hand, usually do what the doctor says without questions. They don’t demand tests or refuse them.
Maybe we’ve lived in the US too long – almost 30 years now, and I was fairly young then. I wonder, though, if the people you are describing are more likely to go to a doctor more often so the percentage of visits from them is higher than that from the rest of us.
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