This post isn't my usual fare, but it's too personal for my more serious blog, so bear with me. Perhaps, some of you have also had annoying or worse experiences in hospitals. Feel free to share/vent in the comments, but no names, please, not even of the hospitals.
Some of the annoyances were minor, some not so minor. The hospital I was in for what probably was food poisoning (or related bacterial infection) is close to home, so was very convenient. But the staff was a bit lacking in the attention to details. So, here is the list of annoyances, in no particular order.
No waste basket in my room, when I finally got a room (which was a private one, thankfully, I think because of my need for an exclusive bathroom). I asked twice for one. It took half a day for one to be delivered. By that time, I'd stacked up a goodly amount of used paper towels by the sink.
The pillow. There was one. There was no case on it. I didn't bother asking about that, mostly because I wasn't sure if that was how they did things. One of the nurse's aides or whatever they called them noticed a few hours later and got a pillowcase and actually put it on the pillow for me!
After a day and a half on the IV, stuck in my right arm (done in the ER when they drew blood, then inserted the IV tube), my inner right elbow area was really hurting, so I asked for the IV to be moved. A nurse did that, while ranting about the ER staff and why they shouldn't do it that way. But although she removed the line from my right elbow, she left in the bit of tubing that the line attaches to. And she also missed something, because the new IV had a leaky connection and my blood moved up and started to leak out a few minutes after she left and I had to have her come back and fix it.
I've had blood drawn before, up to 6 vials at one point. No one has left me as bruised (inner left elbow) as the technician on Friday morning.
I got sick and tired of having them check my blood sugar (3 times a day, along with temperature and blood pressure). The first "sticker" in the ER bruised my finger. The ones who did it later, after I got in a room, were at least more careful.
An hour or so after I was told I was being discharged, the nurse came to remove the IV tubing. I'd already been disconnected from the IV line. When I got home and took off the gauze she'd taped over the holes, the damn one in my inner right elbow was leaking blood. After two hours of compression and an ice pack, it was still doing that. It took another half day before I felt confident it had stopped and I wouldn't bleed to death.
The doctor who was still on duty when I was discharged arranged for me to have one of each pill to tide me over, then wrote me scripts for the antibiotics: Cipro and Flagyl. My hubby took the scripts to the drugstore for me on Saturday and they couldn't be filled. The doctor had used the hospital script pad, but had neglected to include his license number and other relevant data. he also wrote the Cipro one for a dose it doesn't come in (it was the dosage hospitals get). Of course, he wasn't on duty when my husband went to the hospital to get new scripts, so someone else wrote them and wrote the Cipro one for the right dose, but changed the frequency, so I ended up with half the pills I should have.
I have a doctor's appointment tomorrow afternoon, at which time, along with examining me, he'll write me a new prescription for the Cipro.
There's still another month to the year. I hope it passes uneventfully.
Feeling: a bit better
~~~o0o~~~
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Sigh. I wish that was all surprising due to the rarity of neglect, carelessness or incompetence at modern hospitals. I guess I'm fortunate never to have been admitted to one since infancy. The ER visits were bad enough.
ReplyDeleteI hope you never have a bad hospital experience, Karen. Thirteen years ago, I ended up in the ER of another local hospital that has since closed, for food poisoning, but no infection. I was just severely dehydrated. I spent 12 hours in the ER where I was properly attended to and made comfortable, rehydrated, then when they were satisfied I could keep food down, sent me on my way. If that hospital had still been open, I would've gone there, instead.
ReplyDeleteThere is a hospital about 2 miles from me, but after 1 ER visit, I have a standing order with Mrs. Wolf: unless I am in imminent danger of bleeding to death in minutes, I go to a different hospital. The icing on the cake: looped on pain meds, after having knees and ankles x-rayed from a fall, being left to limp back to ER. Took me 15 minutes to find it, bouncing off the walls like a slow-motion pinball.
ReplyDeleteRyan, that's awful. At least I had wheelchair transportation. I have to admit that everyone at the hospital was nice, just not all were detail-oriented.
ReplyDeleteI hope you never are bleeding to death. ;)
Lady B, hospital care varies widely in the US. There's a case now where a woman had her feet and hands amputated because a hospital failed to diagnose an infection and sent her home. By the time she was in horrible pain and went back to the ER, her hands and feet were already gangrenous. I'm assuming she'll sue if she hasn't already.
ReplyDelete