Dr. Sara Saunders sharing her poem Bed 4
Dr Sarah Saunders shares her poem Bed 4 in the newest issue of Journal of Holistic Healthcare.
Here you can read the full poem:
Bed 4
alcoholic
schizophrenic
junkie
frequent flyer
drug-seeking
non-compliant
refused
demanding
difficult
attention-seeking
manipulative
malingerer
time-waster
poor historian
unreliable historian
borderline
psych
social admission
bed blocker
failure to cope
inappropriate presentation
heart failure
failed induction
failure to progress
failure to thrive
failure to attend
confused
not switched on
substance abuser
non-adherent
dementia patient
the gallbladder in bed 4
the appendicitis in resus
GP problem
placement issue
patient
human
Here is her reflection on the work:
" Bed 4 was written out of an ever-growing list of terms I heard while working in the hospital and clinics in remote northern Australia with predominantly Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander patients.
Over the last six years I have kept a note, often scribbled at the edge of a page or jotted on a tatty handover sheet and then transcribed, of words I have heard around the hospital or clinic, in reference to our patients. Reading them back in Bed 4 has led me to reflect on the language I am using daily, as well as my role in gently challenging colleagues to question their own language around patients in our care.
It is not uncommon to have patients here who miss their appointments and we are quick to speak of “non-attendance” and file notes that say “failed to engage”. But many of the patients here live in conditions we rarely speak about: abject poverty, hundreds of kilometres from the nearest hospital, often without a car, without reliable electricity or running water, without public transport. I cannot help but wonder that what we, as medical professionals, label as “disengagement” could in fact be a product of distance, cost, access and social deprivation.
It is true that in our busy clinical spaces, we often reach for shorthand: “malingerer”, “confused”, “GP problem”. At other times, I believe it is our Western medical lens that shapes our language: “heart failure”, “failed induction”. I have come to see that these words are not neutral; they reflect just one view of health and medicine.
This became most evident to me working with Aboriginal patients in remote communities and on their Homelands. What I might once have labelled a “failure” can be understood instead through story, connection to land, and a far broader concept of health. Witnessing the perspectives of the world’s oldest living culture has revealed how narrow my own understanding once was and how much language can obscure as much as it explains. "
