Beach Couple

Review of Georgetown Univ. Medical Cente...

Unfortunately my wife has been admitted to a numbe...

Unfortunately my wife has been admitted to a number of hospitals recently for a serious medical condition. Of all of those hospitals Georgetown definitely comes in last when it comes to patient care from the nursing staff. I have never seen anything run so poorly. The nurses seem to be very competent, however the operation is just terrible. She was treated very well in the ICU, however when she was moved to intermediate care the amount of care was atrocious. In her condition she was unable to summon a nurse via the call bell but I was told she would be checked on every hour. One morning I arrived at 9:00am but did not see a nurse or anyone else until 10:40am. At 11:07am I rang the call bell and called for the nurse, no one came. Called again at 11:30, nurse finally came at 11:34. When I asked why it takes a half hour for someone to come she said no one told her I called. This was not the first time this happened, it happened quit a bit. So when you have a patient who needs to go to the bathroom and has diarrhea and can't walk by themselves you must wait a half hour for the staff to finally show up. The level of nursing care is just unbelievably bad. Hopefully she will never have to return.

Well, here we are six months later and not a whole lot has changed. My wife had to come in for very successful surgery. The review below is for our present stay, keep in mind we have only been in step down care for less than 24 hours. We are so thankful for her surgeons and the ICU staff.

From a patient perspective their nursing system is broken and broken very badly. First of all I want to distinguish between the nurses and the nursing system. The system is just horrible. My wife had a very serious operation and had to to into the ICU for a few days. That system is wonderful, the system broke when she was moved to a step down unit. On the floor she was moved to the nurses do seem competent. When she was first moved to the floor from ICU a nurse came in right away to take her temperature and BP. The nurse said I'll be right back. Since it was 9:30 at night I wanted to talk to the nurse to pass on some information that I thought would be very helpful since my wife has trouble speaking sometimes. I waited a half hour and no nurse, I finally called and asked for someone, anyone. Fifteen minutes later the charge nurse showed up, so at this time it has been 45 minutes since my original call. The charge nurse did apologize. I explained all of my wife's issues that I thought would be helpful.

The very next day my wife was getting an IV in her arm and it started burning. I immediately called and asked for the nurse. The person who took my call said that they would pass on the info. After 10 minutes of continued burning I went looking for her nurse and asked why she did not come. She said no one told her. This did not surprise me at all since the same thing happened numerous times on an earlier hospital stay at this hospital six months earlier. I would also like to point out that this is the only hospital that I am aware of that has this archaic system. Unfortunately my wife has had recent stays at other hospitals, and none function like this hospital. At the two other hospitals when you called for a nurse it would go directly to their phone so they knew you wanted them. At this hospital your page is routed to a unmotivated person who says they will pass the info on (we know this from past experience and this experience) most of the time your info is never passed on. I told my wife to NEVER wait to the last minute to let them know she needs to use the bathroom, because at the pace they move more than likely she will never make it.

Believe me, the one star rating is for the nursing system only. The surgeons and nursing staff have been and are wonderful.