I Reintroduced My Father at Every Shift Change
My father stayed in hospital for 46 days. The people caring for him kept changing. With each change, I had to work out how much of his story had travelled with him.
At every shift change, I listened to what the next person understood. Every three or four days, as staff rotated, I found myself building that understanding again.
I explained who my father had been before this crisis. How he communicated. What his short-term memory difficulties looked like. What he could still understand and respond to. Which changes worried me because they were different from his usual self.
Then I waited to see whether that fuller picture would carry into his care.
Each new person started somewhere different
In earlier articles, I described the incorrect report and the narrow picture conveyed by “87, dementia and hypoxia.”
By this point, those experiences had changed how I approached every conversation.
My father’s hypoxia had developed after he aspirated during the admission, following opioids and feeding despite the swallowing risk I had raised in emergency. That history mattered. So did the distinction between his usual memory difficulties and what we were seeing during this crisis.
Someone meeting him for the first time saw a very ill older man. I had known him before he became that ill. I needed those two perspectives to meet.
Sometimes a staff member already understood much of what I wanted to explain. Sometimes a detail seemed new. I knew handovers took place, but from the bedside I could not tell which parts of our conversations had reached the next person.
Just as I began to feel that someone understood him, their rotation would end.
The next person needed time to get to know him. Meanwhile, his care continued and decisions still had to be made.
Paying attention became part of every visit
I listened carefully to how people described him.
Was a change being understood as part of his current illness, or assumed to be his usual condition? Did the person caring for him know about his swallowing history? Had something we discussed yesterday reached the people working today? Did they understand that his hypoxia had developed during this admission, while he was under the hospital’s care?
I also watched my father: how he responded, what he seemed to understand, and when something appeared different.
That required a kind of attention I had never expected to sustain for so long. I had to decide when to interrupt, when to ask again, and how to explain a concern clearly enough that it could be acted on.
The hardest part was often the uncertainty. I could have a useful conversation and leave without knowing whether its meaning would survive the next handover.
The meeting that changed the conversation
The turning point came when staff approached me about a family meeting.
My understanding was that a bioethicist, would be included, from the way the conversation was presented, I felt they believed I was being unrealistic about my father’s prospects. I understood the proposed discussion to be moving toward whether treatment should continue or whether the focus should become keeping him comfortable as he died.
I took time to consider my response.
Then I told the coordinator I was prepared to meet with the staff. But I would not participate in the discussion as I understood it to be framed. I wanted us to discuss the hospital aspiration event, the condition that had followed, and what the team was going to do to address it to help my Dad recover.
If that was not the purpose of the meeting, I would take my concerns to the CEO’s office.
I said it calmly and directly. I wanted there to be no misunderstanding about my position.
I understood that my father was seriously ill. My concern was that decisions about his future could be made before the team fully understood his baseline and the events that had brought him to this point. His determination to recover deserved their attention, too. He had stood after 30 days on IV fluids alone. To me, that effort was an important part of the picture the team needed to consider.
I needed that understanding to be part of the discussion.
When someone within the team began to see it
Across those changes in staff, we were fortunate.
One or two clinicians cared for my father, rotated away for a period, and later returned, with that additional perspective, what I had been describing became evident to them.
They began to understand more of the person I knew. They could see why some of the distinctions I kept making mattered.
And they could speak with their colleagues from within the care team.
I could observe, question, correct and persist. These clinicians could bring their own observations into clinical discussions and engage the people making decisions about his care.
That was the help I needed.
I cannot isolate one conversation or one person as the reason for his eventual recovery. But I remember the relief of realizing that someone else understood—and could help carry that understanding into places I could not.
Their contribution also showed me why continuity matters. Knowing a patient develops over time. When someone returns with earlier observations in mind, they can recognize changes that a person meeting the patient for the first time may have no way to identify.
I remain grateful to those clinicians. I also remain troubled by how much depended on their returning.
Who carries the story when no one is there?
Two questions have stayed with me.
What happens when there is no family member available to do this?
Someone may have a loving family who cannot spend hours at the hospital. They may live far away, work inflexible hours, or have other people depending on them. Some patients have no one available at all.
And what happens when a family keeps speaking up, but never finds a clinician who can help carry those concerns forward?
I cannot know what would have happened to my father without those people. That uncertainty is precisely why the question matters.
From this experience, I want handovers to preserve more than the immediate clinical update. They need to make clear what is usual for the patient, what has changed, what concerns remain unresolved, and who will follow up.
When a family raises a concern, there should be a way to assess it and carry the relevant information forward. The next shift should be able to see what was raised and what was done about it.
Families can contribute knowledge that is difficult to obtain elsewhere. A dependable care process needs to make that knowledge available beyond the conversation in which it was first shared.
The story also lived in the record
My father’s recovery continued after discharge. I remain grateful to the people who helped him—and to those who came to see the possibilities I had been trying to describe.
But during that hospital stay, reintroducing him at the bedside was only part of the work.
As the crisis deepened, I increasingly turned to the patient portal. I needed to understand how his condition was being recorded and what the next person might learn about him before ever entering his room.
That became another part of advocating for him: reading, comparing, and asking questions about the account that would remain after a conversation ended or a shift changed.
I kept introducing my father to the people caring for him.
I also needed to understand how the record was introducing him.
Next in this series: “When the Crisis Grew, the Portal Became Essential.”
About Medirex Systems Inc.
Medirex Systems Inc. (Medirex) is a Canadian-owned and operated business connecting patients to health information systems. Being an industry leader for over 50 years, Medirex has evolved to bridge the gap between patient identification and engagement by cultivating patient connections with ease, security, and no errors. Providing a positive patient identification experience for over 10 million Canadians, Medirex adopts technologies ensuring that the patient has a voice in their healthcare journey. Medirex aids in the adoption of digital health resources and data to improve the patient experience for your healthcare organization.
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