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The heart of healthcare.

Article Excerpt
More than other workplaces, public hospitals figure prominently in the public imagination. As the basis for TV dramas through to debates about access, funding and staffing, the healthcare system (and its shortfalls) is standard fodder for public discussion. What is often overlooked is the human experience of sickness, and the human transactions that underlie the day-to-day of hospital life.

Most major hospitals are located in the big cities, and many are sited within the city's heart. Traffic, emergency services vehicles, passing trucks and construction provide an edgy accompaniment to one's recovery. This quite apart from the endless ringing of the phone, clatter of the breakfast trolley, hum and beep of machinery and pierce of pagers sounding; and conversations held at volume between staff passing one another in the halls on their way to attend the fellow in Room 3 in dire need of a bedpan, or the woman in Room 7 whose pain relief is overdue.

Then there is the smell. There are few more powerful associations for those who hate hospitals than that of smell. Is it the disinfectants used on the floors and benches, the smell of the linen, the more threatening smell of the bedpan disposal unit--or something darker, that of disease, cancer or death? That imperceptible scent that, while lying just below our consciousness, registers deep in our being, activating our response to flee from this threat to life.

I never seemed to notice the smell, for whatever reason--it never registered. And I loved the noise--the busy, familiar backdrop that provided a welcome distraction for eight hours or more each day. In this world I knew what I was doing. My role was clear, my tasks certain, outcomes measurable. Yet there was always the possibility of the unexpected providing an...

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