June 04, 2010 01:31am EST 

Having a fear of the hospital is not uncommon.  Hospitals can be a scary place, with sick and dying people lining every room.  Some procedures in a hospital may cause fear in a lot of people, as they are often painful and embarrassing.
However, if one is so afraid of hospitals that they can not physically step into a hospital without feeling extremely anxious or scared, it may be time to do something about it.  Such an extreme fear of hospitals will eventually get in the way of treating your own medical illnesses or visiting a sick friend or relative.
Overcoming a fear of anything is not as simple as movies or book may make it out to be.  While “facing your fear” is a very broad statement, many people will automatically associate it with the literal action of forcing yourself to do what you are afraid of doing, or experience what you are afraid of experiencing.  In the case of a hospital, facing the fear may be expected to be as simple as physically taking a step into the hospital.  In reality, overcoming a fear of hospitals may take a long time, and will likely expend more effort than just the taking of a physical step.
There are a few methods to go about facing one’s fear of hospitals, and this article will hopefully provide some of those methods.
1. Find a therapist or a doctor
Whether you are afraid of what is under your hospital bed or afraid of spiders, therapists will be able to help you.  Therapists are professionals whose responsibilities partially include helping individuals deal with their fears (also known as phobias).  Doctors may also be able to help with your anxiety, providing advice on dealing with issues that can affect your medical health.  Ironically, therapists and doctors can both be found inside of hospitals.  For someone with a fear of hospitals, however, it is recommended that you make an appointment with them outside of hospitals.
2. Understand your fear
It may be a number of things about hospitals that scare you.  Get a pen and paper and sit down to write a list of your fears.  Why are you so frightened of hospitals? Understanding your own fear will give you a better chance of overcoming that fear.
3.  Tackle the list
When you have made a list of your hospital fears, begin to deal with them one by one.  If you are scared of the workers in the hospital, research what it takes to become a doctor or a nurse.  If you are scared of the cleanliness of the hospital, talk to an expert about the health and cleanliness code of hospitals.
4.  Go to the hospital
If you are not yet ready to go in the doors, take a few hours and sit outside.  Here, you can observe the workers and patients to better understand how it works as a whole.  When you are ready, take the step into the hospital doors.  Do it as many times as you need until your mind is ready to accept it.  It may take a long time, but do not give up!
5.  Enjoy your medical freedom!
With hard work, your fear will hopefully have subsided.  Congratulations!
13. It’s Wednesday night, and you are out with your spouse on a double date with your friend his wife.  While enjoying your Chilean sea bass dish, your friend asks you your opinion on a matter.  His question?  “Should I bring mother to a large hospital or a small hospital?”
It is a question that you are not set to answer.  Although you consider yourself to have significant knowledge of the medical field as a medical technician, you begin to wonder to yourself whether a small hospital or a large hospital is really that different, and begin to do some research when you go home.
Tackling the question of hospital cost and efficiency is a task that has been taken in the past, but a recent study in the Journal of Healthcare Management in June of 2009 aimed to answer that the question of “do size and ownership type make a difference in the efficiency and cost results of hospitals in Washington State?”  Using a sample of hospitals in Washington State that were either not-for-profit or government-owned hospitals, the study sought to find empirical evidence for the differences caused by the size and ownership of a hospital.
Some of the findings included that small and large not-for-profit hospitals had higher efficiency levels than government-owned hospitals did, that larger hospitals of both not-for-profit and government owned types were more efficient than their smaller counterparts.
As your friend displayed with his question, hospital size has been an area of controversy in the United States healthcare industry.  Questions have consistently sprung up regarding cost management and efficiency.  The question to figure out, then, is whether the additional efficiency of larger facilities is due to economies of scale or if there are other factors.
In the past, many studies have tried to tackle these questions.  In 1982, Coyne (one of the researchers of this study) studied the performance differences between system and independent hospitals.  In 2002, Griffith, Alexander, and Jelinek studied the same subject using different measures.  In 2006, Pink and his colleagues created a financial report for critical access hospitals.  In 2006, Griffith and colleagues studied Medicare data for over 2,500 hospitals that showed little improvement over a 5-year period.
This specific study found 5 key results, listed below:
- Asset turnover results have shown that size matters, but ownership type does not (on its own).  This is determined because all of the smaller hospitals were found to be substantially less efficient than medium or large hospitals of the same type.
- Occupancy percentage shows that both size and ownership type matter in occupancy efficiency.
- Hospital bed sizes were found to matter while ownership type did not in regards to cost per adjusted patien day.  The cost measure to found to be higher in a large hospital than a medium sized hospital.
- The result of full time equivalents per patient day showed that size does not matter, while ownership type did matter because the full time equivalents were found to be higher in government hospitals than not-for-profits.
- Salary per full time equivalent results showed that both hospital size and ownership type mattered.