As I waited in the Emergency Room with my elderly mother today, I listened to two strangers discussing the horrors of what they had heard routinely goes on in ERs across the country. And horrors they were.

One spoke of elderly patients dying in chairs and on gurneys whilst being ignored by overworked staff members; the other gave an account of a friend of a friend whose nine year old daughter died after not being properly treated. As the story went, two doctors of opposing opinions argued over the proper care of the child. One believed the girl had pneumonia and wanted her on antibiotics but the other decided it was a mere cold. The latter of the two was also on the latter of two shifts and won out. The nine year old lasted two days before flesh-eating disease got her. The parents are still waiting for the lawsuit to be tied up a year later.

In all of these cases, the tragedy which resulted might have been avoided with the presence of a competent patient advocate. After a cursory search in my own area of the world, which is Ontario, Canada, I discovered that finding an outside advocate isn’t easy. (I did only a quick search because had I been looking for an advocate in the case of an emergency, it’s logical that that’s all I’d have time for.) I found that it’s possible to get one to accompany a patient to appointments, etc., but the advocate must be interviewed in advance and paid for – highly inadequate in the case of having to go to the hospital in an emergency, and inaccessible for someone with no money. In any case, most of us rely on family and friends to advocate for us, as was the case with the little girl.

I have no way of knowing what the parents’ knowledge of medicine was, nor what their levels of intelligence are, but I do know, as a parent, that most mothers know what their children are like when they’re healthy and how they act when they’re sick. Was the mother in tune with her daughter but unable to express her concerns to the doctor? Did the doctor simply choose not to listen? Again, I don’t know. What I do know is that it’s important for us to have at least a little understanding of what our loved ones are facing before we take the trip to the hospital in the first place. If that means going on the internet to search for the symptoms, so be it. At least we’ll know what questions to ask when faced with a busy doctor, and what to insist on as far as tests go.

I can’t help but think that these horrific events could have been prevented with the right amount of basic knowledge, advocacy, and attention to detail.

It’s scary to think that doctors don’t know what they’re doing. It’s frightening to know that our hospitals lack the funds to provide quality of care. But what is just as alarming is the fact that there’s no one to stick up for us, the patients, when we can’t or won’t stick up for ourselves.