A visit to the hospital can be a time of much stress and worry depending on the reasons for ones visit, therefore it is no surprise that an individual’s natural curiosity might be heightened during such a stay. It is only natural for a patient in a hospital setting to ask questions of the facility’s staff regarding various aspects of their care. ‘Why am I being prescribed this or that medication?’, ‘Why can’t I drink any fluids for however-many-hours before my surgical procedure?’, or even ‘Why are you telling me to stay in bed or off my feet after my procedure when I am already starting to feel much better?’ Another question asked by many upon their discharge from hospital is, ‘Why do I have to be discharged from a hospital in a wheelchair?’ That is a good question, and one I wanted an answer to myself so lets see what I found…
So, why do they often take patients out of the hospital in a wheelchair – even when the patient indicates that they are feeling fine and capable of walking out on their ‘own two feet’? Well there is an obvious and accepted answer to this question in addition to any other perceived reasons for this practice. The primary reason for discharging most patients from a hospital in a wheelchair involves a combination of consideration for the patient and consideration for the hospital’s own liabilities. In other words, if you are being discharged from the hospital in a wheelchair it is because the hospital is looking out for you – and themselves. When a hospital discharges you, the patient, it is only natural that they are concerned about your well-being and wish to avoid seeing you slip, stumble or fall and injuring yourself unnecessarily after any treatments or surgical procedures that you may have undergone during your time in hospital. That is the concern for the patient. As alluded to, the other major concern a hospital will have is the desire to avoid any avoidable liabilities by taking the steps necessary to safely discharge a patient from its care. A hospital’s administration has no desire to see any of its patients suffer accidental injuries due to any negligence on its part during the discharge process. As previously mentioned, the hospital that just released you has no interest in seeing you slip, stumble or fall and injuring yourself unnecessarily and then find themselves facing a lawsuit because they did not make an effort to see you safely off of the premises in a wheelchair. Indeed, there are cases of a hospital being found liable for a patient’s injuries during the discharge process – even though hospital staff were in the midst of arranging for the patient to be brought to the hospital entrance in a wheelchair when she chose to disregard the attending nurse’s request and instead exit the premises with her family members without waiting for the wheelchair.
So those are the major reasons why most if not all patients will find themselves discharged from a hospital in a wheelchair, but is there any other reason people believe that wheelchairs are used?
A Hospital Tradition?
If pressed on the subject, some hospital staff may suggest that discharging a patient via a manual wheelchair is just the way it has always been done, suggesting an element of historical practice for the hospital in question. These kinds of responses suggest a following of tradition by the staff as much as any consideration of potential legal liabilities for the hospital.
A Continuity Of Care?
Another suggestion is that for some locations, the practice of discharging a patient in a wheelchair is mostly based on whether a patient was dependent on the use of a manual wheelchair during their recovery time spent in the hospital following a surgical procedure or treatment. In these cases, the hospital staff are mainly maintaining a protocol that had been previously established for that patient during their time of recovery. Admittedly, when attempting to source these other reasons or motivations for requiring a patient to leave the hospital in a wheelchair, there are many who will take to online forums offering speculation or opinion in the place of facts.
The Impatient Patient?
If there is any potential for friction or maybe mild consternation over this practice it is most likely to come from those who claim to be ‘feeling fine’ and ‘perfectly able to walk out of the hospital on my own two feet’ during the time of their discharge from hospital. Regardless of ones own feelings of ability however, hospital staff are always going to be mindful of the potential for the sudden occurrence of circumstances which might result in unexpected injury to the individual. For example, a patient may be feeling fine but then experience a delayed reaction to a medication administered during their convalescence which renders them unstable and prone to injury from a fall. The use of a wheelchair can effectively preempt this potential for injury. (and of course preempt possible legal difficulties for the hospital)
So there you have it, the most obvious reasons for possibly finding yourself escorted out of the hospital in a wheelchair by an orderly is actually a combination of considerations by the hospital: consideration for the well-being of the individual as well as a consideration for the legal well being of the hospital itself.
