Friendly Medical Advice from your Local Butcher

In continuation to my last post, the hospital and sick child at home experience has given me even more pause for thought – this time in relation to the Spanish approach to medicinal care.  On the one hand I discovered a whole other area where people like to give advice (to my delight, as you can imagine).  On the other hand there was also a slightly laissez faire approach from the nurses in the hospital actually qualified to give it.

Look! FUN with medication!

Spaniards are particularly prone to handing out unqualified medical advice – the government had to run a multi million euro ad campaign which featured a woman in the market handing over her antibiotics to her good friend the neighbourhood butcher telling him to take them to address his cold like symptoms.  The tag line to the ad was “You´re not a doctor, don’t share prescription drugs and see your doctor for medical advice”. Or some such.

In tandem they ran a campaign to re-educate pharmacists to stop handing out prescription drugs without prescriptions.  This was kind of disappointing for me.  The campaign came in to effect when I had just arrived in Spain, and I had been looking forward to stocking up on sleeping pills, Xanax and a whole range of materials in the case of emergencies.  While the latter part of the government campaign has inhibited some of the drug sharing going around, it hasn’t stopped people completely unqualified to do so issuing advice.

When we arrived home from hospital a few days ago, I had to stop one overly helpful relative from putting  Ventolin and saline proportions in the machine from her 15 year old doctors advice slip (thoughtfully brought with her from home) from the time her infant, now studying at University, came down with a bronchial infection.  I was forced to assertively claim my right to follow my own advice slip from the hospital pediatrician, who not only treated the child currently ill but did so in the current decade.

Nurses on the other hand were quite content for me to fumble through administering the medicine and fiddling around with the machines in the ward.  I was in a deep slumber, having just snatched a full one and a half hours of sleep, when I was abruptly woken by a nurse issuing me with a series of instructions that went something like, ‘Keep this Ventolin mask on the baby for 15 minutes and after switch back to the oxygen by replacing the valve connecting to his nose tubes here and that there and snapping this in to place like so’.  She also, I assume, said turn the valve down from 5 to 1. But I didn’t catch that bit.  I wasn’t actually entirely awake yet, which the more perceptive among us might have gathered from my squinty eyes and the fact I was still struggling to sit up.

So I did all that, except the turning down the valve to 1 bit, and given N was looking a little more alarmed than one generally does when one has tubes up their nose, I whipped out to reception to check with the nurse that I’d done it all correctly.  Apparently not.  Seeing the pressure level at which I’d left the oxygen machine, directly leading to N’s nose, she told me I should check if I’m not sure (to which I tried to suggest that perhaps the nurses should actually be doing the nurses work instead of delegating it to half asleep mothers, but my Spanish may have failed because she bustled out without reacting so I suspect I may actually have said “Nurses are working mothers” or something equally meaningless but, possibly, inadvertently supportive).  Before leaving she turned down the oxygen blasting up N’s nose to the correct level.  Poor little wombat.  I imagine it was a bit like having a leaf blower up his nostrils.

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