bed-blocker n. a patient who will not or cannot be moved to another medical facility, either due to a shortage of beds or because of the patient’s refusal. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
It was a dark and stormy night. So begins the long and increasingly convoluted prose of Edwards Bulwer-Lytton’s best-known novel. Today the annual Bulwer-Lytton Contest asks contestants for fanciful first sentences that are similarly...
How do social media algorithms shape the way we communicate? A new book argues that the competition for clicks is changing the way we speak and write, from the so-called “YouTube accent” to the surprising evolution of the word preppy. Also: A...
why are some people ‘bed blockers?’ could it be because when they became ill, they were not consulted about their diagnosis, their prognosis and medication? In January of this year, the general practitioner was called in to see my mother who had become extremely ill in an ‘assisted living scheme’. The G.P., a very experienced man of some 50+ years of age, diagnosed a heart attack. Mother was taken to hospital where she was diagnosed as having a ‘chest infection and concurrent uti infection’. She was never told what was wrong with her (no diagnosis). She was never told what the outcome of her current ‘crisis’ would be. She was never asked if she would accept the medication prescribed. She was administered an antibiotic and steroid treatment and sent home. It is some 4 months later now and we are still suffering as a consequence from this initial hospitalisation and so is she. At 84 and in poor shape, this may well have been the ‘ideal’ time for her to have died – with dignity – instead of suffering the horrendous problems she has, since that time.