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Status Post Party Planner
An event coordination planning service that delivers updated and appropriate notifications to guide well-wishers to their first visit with a critically ill acquaintance. | |
"Our loved one will be coming out of surgery and through recovery in two hours! What do we do? There are so many people who want to know what say and when to come, or if to come for a visit. If we only knew to buy poppy or gladioli, humorous or condolence cards, or dried, fresh, or liquid fruit."
Then
the attending staff appears and states, "We had some difficulty prepping, so we expect to finish late. Expect us to be another hour or so before we'll update you." Arr! What is more distracting than to be asked to pass information when no one can estimate how long events take?
A status post party planner could work from a secure office with ties to any medical facility. From its central switchboard, the planner keeps up logs of inquirers and VIPs who want a hand in expression of their wishes to the patient or to the patient's family. Assuming all know of the patient's condition and of what procedure may be underway, the planner monitors the progress of the patient through that procedure and regularly updates a database, from which inquirers may check their acquaintance's estimated awakening time (EAT) or estimated to be receiving upstairs guests (ERUG).
Utilizers of the service could either receive notification at a level preapproved by the patient or next of kin that includes changes in the patient's condition, or receive a preapproved update on the patient's progress toward good condition to receive visitors. Some patients take a more tortuous course to recovery than others and their notifications would be unnecessarily complex, so a simple note like "at this time the patient is expected to be able to receive visitors by 6:30 p.m. Thursday" would be more feasible.
More information specific to the event could be preapproved and would follow the recovery course. An example would be, "The family present at this time thanks you for you involvement with _____, but requests that at this time no visitors or gifts arrive until the patient's condition changes". Another example, "Due to an unforeseen change in the patient's condition, the family present requests inquiries be directed to telephone #, and respectfully refuses visitors at this time."
On the bright side, a simple "It's a girl!", press #1 to order flowers, press #2 to order a card, press #3 to order a special meal item for mom, press #4 to order cigars for dad, press #5 to record a personal message, would provide well-wishers an opportunity to break in while the news is fresh. For longer hospitalizations or larger groups of acquaintances, a majordomo could be attached to the planning service to attend to more complicated requests for specialty purchases or unique circumstances.
Caring Bridge
http://www.caringbridge.org/index.htm
Caring Bridge [Alysonwonderland, Nov 19 2006]
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Maybe SMS the status to interested parties so they can keep track on the way to the hospital. |
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"Mr. Smith is still alive"
....
"never mind" |
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When my son was sick, my best friend did something very much like this for us. He set up a voicemail account just for news of our boy. Every so often (more often when he was most critically ill), one of us recorded a new outgoing message with the latest word on his condition: |
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"He came out of surgery about an hour ago and will be in recovery until about 7:00, then he'll be in pediatric intensive care for the next few days. He can't have visitors until he's out of PICU, but we'll be in the waiting area on the second floor all night, so feel free to come and see us. We don't have a room, so we don't have any place to put flowers and so forth. It's you that we want to see, anyway." |
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People left us lots and lots of loving messages and prayers of support on the voicemail. Almost all of them -- and some of the outgoing messages -- were recorded and saved for us by another friend who runs a recording studio. We still have most of them around here somewhere. |
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I can't tell you how great it was not to have to say the same thing over and over again, and to be able -- when we were free -- to hear the voices of family and friends. |
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We did it with technology, rather than with a service, because we live in Silicon Valley and we aren't made of money, but this is such a great and proven idea that I think it deserves a bun. |
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:-) What a great help that must have been. I got my first inkling of how useful this sort of thing is when a friend was inpatient for a heart procedure and I mass mailed updates that included the hospital "Patient email" -- a link to a text entry screen that received, organized, and printed text messages. It was cool when a hospital volunteer brought in a newspaper, a menu, and a stack of 'get well' messages ... |
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