That's true and it's only recently that I realized the importance of it. It's imperious that patients be accompanied by a loved one or someone they can trust to look out for their interests and provide an adversarial viewpoint to the medical staff. Patients who are gravely injured/sick can not advocate for themselves and doctors will not listen.
I was recently hospitalized after an accident and was unable to have any family with me because of covid measures. As a result I received the worst medical care I've ever experienced. Including but not limited to: waiting 8 hours in the ER with four broken limbs and no painkillers, having procedures done with no painkillers that required them, being given dangerous dosages of drugs because of a miscommunication between teams despite my protests, having sequels from surgeries that were never addressed by the medical team and that I was too high to ask about, having to program my own medical bed so that it'd stop shaking my broken limbs after 5 hours of unanswered pleading with the staff, having to solve severe complications from the drugs with the help of my family doctor, not eating anything for a week without anybody getting worried... I could go on. I'd experienced similar issues during previous hospital stays, these sort of things happen regularly in hospitals, but I always had someone trustworthy with me to point them out and make a fuss before they became real problems.
I was recently hospitalized after an accident and was unable to have any family with me because of covid measures. As a result I received the worst medical care I've ever experienced. Including but not limited to: waiting 8 hours in the ER with four broken limbs and no painkillers, having procedures done with no painkillers that required them, being given dangerous dosages of drugs because of a miscommunication between teams despite my protests, having sequels from surgeries that were never addressed by the medical team and that I was too high to ask about, having to program my own medical bed so that it'd stop shaking my broken limbs after 5 hours of unanswered pleading with the staff, having to solve severe complications from the drugs with the help of my family doctor, not eating anything for a week without anybody getting worried... I could go on. I'd experienced similar issues during previous hospital stays, these sort of things happen regularly in hospitals, but I always had someone trustworthy with me to point them out and make a fuss before they became real problems.