At least once a week, a Jewish patient beckons to me.

“Maybe you can tell the doctor to pay attention to us,” Mr. Patient says. “I did a CT scan three hours ago, and we’re still waiting for the results!”

“I know you’re frustrated, but they’re doing their best. The hospital wants you to be able to leave as soon as possible,” I answer.

“Yeah, sure,” he snorts. “Why can’t I just get the results? What’s wrong with these people?”

I don’t tell him the patients are stacked six deep in the waiting room and the radiologist is going over the images as quickly as possible.

“The people here are doing their best,” I try to reassure the doubter. “No one’s an anti-Semite. No one’s out to get you.”

And that’s true, but the system is a nightmare.

People love to call us “healthcare heroes,” which is a cute moniker that overlooks one important fact: Even the mightiest superheroes trip on their capes sometimes. Even the most neurotic, detail-obsessed healthcare professional will make mistakes. During my orientation, one doctor told us, “You’re going to make errors. Hopefully, none of them kill anyone.” It was probably the most honest and accurate statement I heard during my years of residency.

Seen from the inside, US healthcare is a hybrid mess. It is, in large part, a for-profit enterprise (something patients like to forget — or never stop remembering, depending on who they are!). Hospitals operate like corporations, and the people at the top want to make money, just like any executive. This isn’t an unreasonable demand, but the strains on the system make this a difficult task. Some parts of healthcare are heavily subsidized by the government, like Medicaid and Medicare, which pay set amounts for medical expenses. Other parts of healthcare rely on private pay. To make everything profitable, the costs for private-pay patients are hiked up (and up) to cover the care we are legally obligated to provide to everyone else (this is where you’ll see the $25 Band-Aid on your bill).

And then there are the patients themselves, many of whom are victims of circumstance. Emergency rooms are the place where anyone can be dumped, insured or not. We legally cannot turn them away. It’s the place where elderly patients without family occupy beds for months because the hospital cannot discharge them alone.

Patients can sometimes be rude, obnoxious, and violent. They refuse medications or machines like CPAP or dialysis, which is their legal right, but when that refusal causes suffering, we’re left trying to put the pieces back together (and spend more money repairing damage that didn’t have to happen). The vast majority of the people on staff are doing the best they can under the worst possible conditions.

So what does that look like from my side of the floor? Last week, a local politician came to visit our illustrious institution. My night shift was punctuated by the diligent sounds of personnel scrubbing the outside of the vending machines until they gleamed. The floor tiles looked breathtakingly shiny. And in overheated rooms, patients bitterly cursed the quality of the food or writhed in agony when there wasn’t enough morphine to go around. Nurses pirouetted through the halls with their computers to avoid Wi-Fi dead spots.

I’ve watched a ventilator being wheeled into a patient’s room, knowing that it was the last one in the hospital. I’ve slapped tape over a hole in a ventilator circuit because there were simply no more left. On the beds, contraptions to prevent seizure injuries have been MacGyvered together using blankets and maternity support garments.

In our hospital, the hackneyed saying, “Necessity is the mother of invention,” plays out in bold, vibrant color — especially in the medication room. When I started working in this hospital, I searched in vain for an excellent medication I’d always used to help break down mucus.

“This is what we use,” a nurse informed me. It was a medication with the eye-watering stench of rotten eggs, and I recoiled.

“Why this? Why not medication X?” I asked my colleague.

“Medication X is $45 per dose, while this medication is 45 cents per dose,” she answered wearily.

Of course.

I’m no longer surprised by the signs from the pharmacy that bloom like toxic flowers on the walls: “X medication no longer available. Substitute with Y.” (Translation: X is too expensive, let’s hope Y works). Sometimes it feels like everything is held together with zip ties and the sheer willpower of people who haven’t had a real lunch break since yesterday.

Last night, I was holding down the fort on my floor with two other healthcare personnel — one less than the minimum amount of people necessary. I felt like an octopus whose tentacles were being slowly pulled apart. While I was with one patient at a CT scan, my phone rang: “We have a respiratory distress incoming.”

“Well, I’m in CT with a patient. You’re going to have to have the paramedics wait until I’m done.” Even when I’m racing from person to person, rivaling an Olympic sprinter, I can’t be in two places at once. The end of my night shift makes me yearn deeply for someone to just dump me into a shopping cart and wheel me to my car. But the physical exhaustion is manageable compared to the emotional exhaustion.

Because, while the ER might look “quiet” to someone waiting for ten hours to be checked in, behind the triage door we can be dealing with terrible, time-consuming things, scenes that are going to scar us forever. Tragic car accidents. Shooting victims. Avoidable deaths. Screaming family members. The numbness of shock and grief and the ruin of a young adult with his or her whole life ahead of them… and now, nothing. I always find it particularly painful to see a life on the cusp of adulthood cut short, so much possibility unrealized, and nothing left behind except a grieving family with nothing to hold on to from their loved one. It’s hard to process.

This is what I feel — and I’m middle-aged, extremely experienced, and I’ve been smacked around by life enough that I don’t get easily flustered. But I’ve become the dinosaur in my department, an ancient relic of the past, surrounded by staff who are all young enough to be my sons and daughters (literally). Nurses who’ve barely learned how to chart are already doing the night shift. Their medical muscle memory hasn’t kicked in yet, but they’re being asked to care for seven, eight, or ten patients at once. They can safely care for four, maybe six, but more? Foley bags overflow, IV fluids run dry, and pain meds are delayed — not because the nurse doesn’t care, but because the nurse is drowning.

When you’re talking about someone in their twenties and this is their first or second job, why would they want to continue the insanity? It’s not a surprise that the medical world is hemorrhaging floor nurses. I see nurses breaking down and weeping because, being so worn and tired, they’ve made a mistake with potentially life-altering consequences. I’ve seen them lash out, shut down, or engage in risky behaviors as they try to cope with an impossible system where “do more with less (staff)” is the mantra recited by executives who have never crossed the threshold of a patient care area.

One of my friends, a first-year nurse, was fired for a medical error. She had nine patients instead of five, two with the same last name, hadn’t gone to the bathroom since 9 a.m., and was surviving on caffeine and jelly beans. When the inevitable error happened, I couldn’t even say it was her fault. If she hadn’t made that mistake, another nurse would have. The system failed, and mistakes like hers don’t belong to individuals; they belong to a disastrous structure that takes dangerous situations from “maybe” to “when.”

But one of the hardest parts of the job? The utterly clueless public.

Picture the scene: I’m leaving the triage room after a complicated delivery, blood splattering my ankles, when a young man blocks my mad dash for crucial supplies.

“Excuse me, my mother needs a drink of water.”

And maybe she does, but I can’t give it to her right now, even though I wish I could. You’re standing there, arms crossed, tapping your foot, acting like we’re deliberately making you wait. Maybe you’re screaming (or worse). But I want you to know this: We haven’t eaten, we haven’t used the bathroom, and we’re physically and mentally at our absolute limit.

I had one frum man come in with his uncle for a painful sprain.

“When will my uncle’s results come back?” he asked me.

“I don’t know,” I answered. “It depends. There’s a lot going on. When the results come in, someone will tell you as soon as possible.”

He bent down, his beard inches from the brim of my snood, and whispered, “Tell me the truth. You know what’s going on here since October 7. They’re all anti-Semitic, aren’t they?”

“I’ve been working here since October 7, and I’ve seen nothing but kindness and compassion,” I told him firmly. I’m not denying that anti-Semitism exists, but in the day-to-day care of our patients, I don’t see it. He glared at me and started yelling.

I wanted to tell him — and other frum patients like him — that everyone deserves the benefit of the doubt. As the only frum person in my workplace, I’ve seen a lot, and there is not a single person here who works on a hospital floor — nurse, tech, medic, or doctor — who isn’t deeply committed to caring for people. So please, stop assuming they’re making you wait on purpose. I can assure you they’re not (and if you’re being a nudge, they’d love to tell you to leave).

What should you, the patient, do? Show kindness and gratitude. Give an exhausted nurse a smile, treat an orderly like a real person, bring a card or gift or snack to the front desk for the overworked medical staff. A simple “thank-you” is also appreciated (especially since those are pretty rare).

A few nights ago, a Jewish man showed up with a beautiful card and gift basket for the nurse who had cared for his wife. Everyone paused, and then we applauded. That nurse will now treat that patient (if she comes in again) and the next lady who shows up in a snood with extra care. Gratitude doesn’t just help one person. It benefits all of us.

Ethical healthcare would provide enough staff so people can eat, go to the bathroom, breathe, and call in sick without fear. It would provide a cushion so mistakes don’t become disasters. That’s what it should be. That’s what it rarely is. So be patient. Let us do our jobs without screaming at us. The reality is often dark and grim, but you can be the bright spot on our shift.

We work with a veneer of shiny hallways hiding real suffering. We’re stressed and we’re human. We’re doing our best to keep things running on shoestrings and hope.

Believe me, we’re here because we care, and we’ll do whatever we can to keep hearts beating… even if it means trying to save a life for three hours straight. But please, don’t make our hearts break more than they already do.

The best…

food to offer medical staff? Not doughnuts (those are a dime a dozen). Bring in a classic Jewish food, like a pan of potato kugel or fresh rugelach from a nearby bakery, something the staff can’t easily get for themselves. They love it!

Don’t ask me…

“Was he Jewish?” when I’m talking about a patient. After working in this field for decades, it’s a question I’ve come to hate. This is a field where you hope your healthcare provider has compassion for everyone.

It’s important…
to see beyond your specific issue when you come to the hospital. We understand that you’re overwhelmed, scared, and maybe in pain. But often, so are we. We both need to work together to make things work. Let the Jewish patients be the ones my colleagues look forward to.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 982)