Greg Noack has seen the health care industry work from both sides. He received months of rehabilitation after suffering a brain injury in a savage attack in 1996 and for the past 20 years has provided care to patients as a rehabilitation therapist in Toronto. These days, Noack, a Sault native, doesn’t like everything he sees in the way patient care is delivered across health care. He recently published a book titled Collateral Damage: When Caregivers Stop Caring, sharing his feelings about what he perceives as a lack of empathy for patients and the need for patients and family members to stand up for themselves going forward. in this coldness. . “The book basically shows that the state of health care is not good, especially compared to the care I received and looking at what it has evolved into in my 20-plus years of working in health care,” Noack said, speaking to SooToday from Toronto. . Noack agrees that more staff need to be hired across the health care system, but that there also needs to be more empathy for patients among younger clinical staff. “It’s a different generation of workers,” Noack said. “I don’t want to criticize the millennial mentality, but when I was doing my own rehab, all my therapists were in their 50s and they really individualized my care and really took care of me. Now, I’m twice as old as many of the clinicians I work with, and I just have a different mindset. There is no personalization of care. Just “do the job and move on to the next patient”. “I don’t want to paint everyone with the same brush. I also work with a lot of amazing people, but I’m just finding that number may be dwindling now as I get older and the staff younger.” After leaving the Sault to work in western Canada, Noack was attacked by a gang after a night shift in Victoria, BC in November 1996. Suffering from a brain injury, he was unconscious for 15 days and had to regain the use of his legs and left arm. After months of rehabilitation, Noack received further care from his mother in southern Ontario. Inspired by the level of care he received at the hospital, Noack returned to his hometown to study at Sault College’s Occupational Therapist Assistant and Physiotherapy Assistant program. He has worked as a rehabilitation therapist with the University of Toronto Health Network for the past two decades. Noack shared his story with SooToday in a 2018 interview.
After being attacked, he received two months of inpatient treatment and seven months of outpatient treatment. “That’s unheard of these days,” Noack said. “It’s so fast now. We’re turning people over and they’re not getting the resources I had. It’s amazing how this happened.” Noack credits his mother Dianne Quinn’s involvement as a huge factor in his own recovery. “My biggest personal concern is for those who don’t have a mother like me, a support or support group like me, and the question becomes, ‘Who speaks for them?’ If I hadn’t had my 26-year-old mother years ago — when things were good — I wouldn’t be here today. I would definitely be in trouble if I was in today’s health care.” “If we don’t do a good job of detoxification, it’s a trickle down effect. It affects the patient’s life after rehabilitation in long-term care or at home and burdens their caregivers. If we’re not interested here in rehabilitation, that results in collateral damage.” Noack said the care for his father — Sault’s Lennox Noack, who died of cancer in 2013 — could have been better. Noack’s book is dedicated to his father. “I didn’t like some of the things my father experienced in the hospital,” she said. “The things I talk about in my book are everywhere. I wave at him. I want this book to say, “Okay people, if you see something wrong, speak up because this is your loved one.” I still talk about it nine years later, but that’s the impact my father’s level of care had on me.” To ensure patients receive the quality of care they need, Noack urges them to speak up. “I want to empower those who need health care to speak up. They have to talk to get what they need to get. The back of my book has a checklist of things to take. If patients just take that out of my book, I’d be happy.” “In the book I want to speak for those who cannot speak.” Collateral Damage: When Caregivers No Longer Care is available for sale online.