After Ivylad’s last surgery, he has vowed never to go back to that hospital again. Among other things:
He shared a room with an obviously altered elderly man. During the night, he soiled himself. After about an hour, Ivylad finally had to get up and go find a nurse, because they were ignoring this man’s call button requests for help.
They took blood pressure readings on the arm that had an IV stuck in it. When he complained that the cuff was too tight and his hand was going numb, the nurse just ignored him. He’s had blood pressure tests before, and knows there will be, you know…pressure, but not like this.
When he was discharged, he was given no information on incision site care, how often to change the bandages, what to look for in case of infection, etc. When I wrote a letter to the hospital complaining, the ombudsman wrote back that Ivylad was told this information upon discharge. I don’t know about you, but I always left the hospital with an armful of paperwork on what to do and what to look for with post-op care.
All in all, he felt the nursing staff was at the very least uncaring about their patients.
My aunt is a nurse who visits several facilities, and when my grandfather was in one of the places she goes to, she was shocked and amazed to see that he had three pillows! In other words, she found out that her coworkers really held her in high esteem.
I have to say that thanks to mrAru’s background he is the perfect family member to have around for any sort of surgical insult -
when I had a tumor removed I had a 4 inch long, half an inch deep and half an inch wide open wound that he did the wound care on - left me with a minimal scar, he arranged the bedroom so I had my computer in there to amuse myself [i have eye of the beholder memorized so I can literally walk in when someone is playing and walk them through to the end. I have actually walked someone through over the phone… =) ]
He is also great with med interactions. he has always made sure that he is fully involved in my medical care.
My last operation was at Yale New Haven, and they were absolutely phenomenal. Everybody introduced themselves, every step of the way they made sure that the directions were perfectly clear, and rob was with me everywhere up until they rolled me into the theater and was waiting for me in post op. They even called my cell the next morning to make sure that everything went well after we got back to the hotel.
I blame the new “automatic” cuffs for this. The old manual ones didn’t not pump up to that extreme. (well, they did, but only if your BP was approaching 200/100). I hate the perceived convenience of these new cuffs. The aides love them. When there were still manual ones on the unit, I’d often have had 2-3 BPs taken in the time it took one of the auto ones to “find” and “read” a BP. The BP in the IV arm… It’s not best practice, but sometimes we have no choice (it sounds like there was a choice with ivylad).
I find this bizarre. I know of no hospital where you don’t get written instructions upon discharge. This not only helps you and the family out, but it covers the butts of the nurses etc. The pts get a carbon copy of the d/c instructions–the original goes in the chart.
aruqvan–that’s good to hear and I’m glad you’re doing well.
