Since I was a young lad I've had a misconception of hospitals; I associated them with the clinics that doctors opened in the suburbs where I'd go to get a shot or a check-up, or eventually to a dermatologist. Easy mistake for a kid: there are nurses at those clinics, there's the nice fun Highlights magazines in the waiting room, there are some brief tests like taking temperature, measuring blood pressure, and I eventually (after waiting a while) see a doctor.
Really only until MJ became a nurse that I really understood what a big, internationally-renowned hospital looks like, with various wings and various buildings filled with armies of doctors, nurses, support staff, technicians, volunteers, clincial assistants, and unfortunatley, patients. And the patients' loved ones. Advice for all parents who want to nudge their kids into the warm embraces of the medical field and to become a doctor: maybe get the kid to go to a real hospital and feel out the place, understand what the doctor does, maybe even job shadow someone for a day. Solid advice for any career option, actually, as I really didn't know any lawyers before deciding to go to law school. Only at one of these mega-hospitals did I get a sense of how closely hospitals resemble a large corporation, except the employees are working amongst the clients/customers.
Over the holiday, my mom had successful surgery at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in L.A., one of the premier hospitals in the L.A. area along with USC, UCLA, City of Hope (world-renowned cancer hospital) where I got a first-hand experience (well, luckily for me, it was more second-hand since I wasn't the patient and wasn't sick) of how one of these runs: it is a very corporate experience in a good way for the patient, as the attending nurses were all very nice and took care of everything. Of course the hospital likely is getting paid a pretty penny for that exceptional service and is contributing to the exorbitant costs of health insurance nationwide and the "pyramid scheme within a scam within a scheme" that some describe the healthcare system is, but at least at the tail end of that scheme there's a bit of good that comes out of it: my mom agreed that her surgery was done very professionally by the doctor, who explained the surgery every step of the way and kept her informed with phone calls about what the procedure would entail. Mom's first doctor she visited in a non-descript local hospital was highlighted by doctor telling her she needed to operate within the month "or she might die." Seems like an unprofessional, coercive thing to say and.....setting himself up for some sort of lawsuit down the road. Glad we didn't go with the first doctor.
Cedar Sinai's campus is what I imagine Google, Facebook, or some other big tech firm's campus is like: 10-story buildings filled with beds and hospital rooms, but also office spaces where doctors and other staff had their own offices to do research, just like white-collar workers would have in their respective office buildings (except white-collar workers are mostly all working remotely right now and who knows, maybe for the foreseeable future). There were sky bridges linking building to building and building to parking lot (even the parking lots were 10 stories high, that's how many people occupy the buildings) and even outdoor plaza areas to walk around either on the ground or on an elevated plaza area, whichever you feel comfortable with. (I always compare high-tech architectural places to the scenery in the movie "Her," which was filmed in L.A. and Shanghai). I did find myself kinda wanting to work in a kind of environment like Cedar Sinai, until I realized all the actual work happens inside the buildings on the busy floors where nurses have to push themselves to take care of all the patients they have to see, especially with Covid.
There are operation floors where surgery takes place, post-op rooms, floors with a specific body part like "heart," or "kidney," North Towers and South Towers, check-in gates where visitors had to show ID and Covid vaccine cards (monitored more closely than New York restaurants and United States customs agents!). a cafeteria open to employees and the public alike, and......the hospital's very own blood donation center on the ground floor. The proximity was so convenient, so I gave back to the hospital what the hospital hopefully gave to my mom: I donated blood, and there the center has full-time employees just drawing blood there everyday, called "phlebomitists" who specialize in puncturing veins with needles and drawing blood. Everything about Cedar Sinai struck me as being a smooth operation, an engine with a greasy wheel that's facilitating as many patient visits as possible and serving the area during one of the worst public health crises in the history of the world. The 70's were the eras of the hippies and protestors, the '90's were the new computer age, the 2000's were the dawn of smartphones, the 2010's social media, maybe 2020's the hot and happening places in the U.S. are.......hospitals?
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