First few Article Sentences
Two years ago I spent the better part of seven days at the bedside of my eighty-five year old mother who had fallen and was hospitalized in a highly reputable Portland hospital. While the experience was difficult for her, it was profound for me. Despite two decades of hospital employment, I had never spent this amount of concentrated time viewing the world from the standpoint of the person at the center of our work—the patient.
As I watched each of the many hospital staff in roles so familiar to me diligently performing their duties, I had the sense of members of an orchestra who didn’t realize they were on the same stage. It was as though each had learned a tune in isolation from the others and had practiced it to proficiency. Now they were in the midst of a performance without a full understanding of how the parts fit together, when one should start or another stop, the speed and cadence of the music, or how the overall piece should sound to the listener.