In the Philippines, family members called hospital watchers stay with patients to provide care and make medical decisions. Julia describes sleeping in the hospital, bringing food and hygiene supplies, and how government hospitals often require them while private ones don't. The practice is shifting as remote workers take on watcher duties.
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Welcome to the Secret Sauce of Outsourcing podcast that's dedicated to making you better at outsourcing to the Philippines. This is episode 350. Hospital watchers are a thing in the Philippines. So this is, this is going to be so good and so interesting. A few months ago, one of my ofs, Jam, talked about taking care of his mom. He talked about how he takes her to the hospital and he stays with her and he works at the hospital while she's there because she's sick and she has appointments and they go regularly. It's a thing for. For Jam to spend a good amount of time at the hospital with his mom. Now, in the US we typically do this differently. If we're healthy enough to take ourselves to the hospital, we will always just take ourselves to the hospital. If we're not healthy enough to get there, someone will take us and drop us off and go and come back and pick us up. Or if we know someone who is in the hospital, then we go and visit them during visiting hours and we leave and they stay there and nurses take care of them and the doctors see them. And that's our experience with hospitals. But in the Philippines, it's different. And I didn't know this until Jam started talking about it. And then Julia sent me an email about hospital watchers. And this actually explains so much of why you hear so much about how my aunt is sick, my father is sick. You hear this, people are always sick. Well, why is that so different than the U.S. this is why. Here's what Julia says. I'm going to read this. When a sick family member needs to be hospitalized, at least two people go to the hospital, the patient and the watcher. A hospital watcher is ideally a close family member assigned to care for the patient and stay with them in the hospital. They are responsible for the getting updates from nurses and doctors on the condition, procedures and patient instructions, making medical decisions or getting medical decisions from family members authorized to do so. Because of this, the watcher is usually also someone who either can or has to take time off from work, isn't working, or someone who can work anywhere. Like your ofs. Being a hospital watcher is hard. So the family member usually shares the watcher duties amongst several relatives. But there's usually a main watcher. They're the ones who often stay overnight, stay there the most, know the patient the best, and can make medical decisions if needed. Hopefully you're seeing this picture of a hospital room with a curtain between it and two hospital watchers there with the patients she continues, hospital watchers aren't really needed. Hospitals in the Philippines don't require patients to have watchers. Most most private hospitals prefer if you don't have one. But because of our strong family ties, most people can't bear the thought of having their loved ones alone in the hospital, cared for by strangers, even if these strangers are medical professionals with years of experience providing round the clock care because nobody can really take care of you like family. The exception is government hospitals. Patients there are required to have a watcher because they don't have enough medical personnel to constantly monitor the patients. Now I'm going to interject here that most people going to hospitals in the Philippines are going to government hospitals. Unless they have a private hmo which you're providing for them, they probably don't have the money to go to a private hospital. So now, she continues, we're so used to having watchers around that some hospitals also provide food and hygiene kits for them if asked. Most patient rooms have couches or small beds for the watcher to sleep in. Some fancier hospitals even have closets for the watcher to store clothes or a kitchenette for simple food prep. I know hospital watches aren't necessary, but I was so thankful that my mom and husband were my watchers. After my difficult C section years ago, I didn't have to call the nurse to help me go to the restroom, have a drink, or make me more comfortable. The doctors could just go to my room and ask my mom or husband when they needed to do a procedure on my child who was in the NICU then or me. I was confident that I got good postpartum care because my watchers were there asking the nurses questions on what to do and watching them how to do it properly. Also, I don't like the idea of a stranger bathing me, even if that stranger is a nurse. Keeping myself clean that time was easier because my watchers were there. Because I work from home and my good bedside manner, I've become something of an on call watcher even for extended family members, usually on weekdays when most of the family are working or to take over so the primary watcher can rest a bit. Here's a picture of if you're watching this on YouTube, you're seeing a picture of Julia with a mask on at the hospital as a watcher. Many hospitals have also gotten used to online workers as watchers because the last hospital I was in while watching my aunt had really good wi fi. It wasn't as good as the one I have at home, but Good enough to do most of the work while I was there. So that's an interesting piece of this. People are getting used to virtual workers OFS working in the hospitals while being a watcher. It's that common. Okay, so now here's a little bit of the not so good side of this, she says. But there's also a downside with watchers. Some families can overdo it. I've visited hospital rooms with too many watchers for just one patient. And if you're seeing this on YouTube, hopefully you're seeing this picture of the patient in bed, along with a child in bed and another child in a chair next to the bed. This can stress out the patient and increase the risk of infection. This was evident in the early days of the pandemic when so many watchers contracted Covid. The hospitals have gotten stricter with allowing watchers in hospitals. They also impose strict no watchers policies in places like the ICU or quarantine areas to minimize patient stress and infection. Can you imagine in the US During COVID if we were having watchers come into the hospital with COVID patients? Yeah, you weren't even allowed to go visit your patients. But watchers is such a strong cultural thing in the Philippines that watchers were getting Covid because they were there with their family members watching them while they're sick in the hospital. Then, of course, Covid was so contagious that, yep, you were catching it too. So all of this, I had no idea. And now it makes so much sense why my aunt is sick, I can't work, my father's sick, my mother, my sister. You hear it all the time. I was just talking with my brother the other day who was saying, dude, why are people so sick in the Philippines? Well, it's not that they're actually more sick there. It's that it just requires more of more people when someone is sick because you have to have people watching them in the hospital. Hopefully this helps you understand the culture of the Philippines as you work with your ofs.
