Erin McKenas

Review of Dallas Regional Medical Center

I was refused treatment because I asked for a whee...

I was refused treatment because I asked for a wheelchair. No, seriously, let me explain. I was taken into triage, but only AFTER I was forced to stand and wait a good ten minutes while the front desk employee spoke with another member of the staff (in my opinion, the staff member should've been placed on hold, she was not a patient and was discussing billing, not patient care) in extreme pain, and heart flutters with dizziness and nausea. I'd fallen and smacked my head on the windowsill hours before.

Anyway, finally get admitted to triage. The wait time was not bad, I'll give them that. The triage nurse is TERRIBLE, and I wish I'd gotten her name. I asked for a barf bag just in case, and you'd have thought I asked her to locate the closest unicorn. Ended up having to hold a trash can full of used thermometer covers (the part that goes into sick patient's mouth) up to my face. So then the nurse wants me to lie down with a neck brace on. Not once did she check my heart in all this, which was my reason for admittance, the concussion came up secondarily. I get that concussions are bad, but heart attacks are a little more urgent (thankfully that was not the case).

Then I made the mistake of asking her not to use an attitude with my fiance because I was already feeling sick enough. My fiance had mentioned that I hadn't been offered a wheelchair and I was very dizzy and she snapped at him. After I asked her not to use an attitude, please, she called security. Called. Security. Not before shouting to the receptionist, though, who could not find the complaint forms when I asked for them and kept telling me "they're just around the corner there..." If you can guess by the way this story is progressing, they weren't "just around the corner there."

The charge nurse came out and started speaking down to me, asking if I knew how triage worked and sometimes there was a wait time (??? I never said anything about wait time and even said something about how fast it was when we walked in triage) and kept generally speaking down to me. The entire time, one of the other nurses was laughing at us. At that point I obviously did not want this hospital to get any kind of business out of me, so my fiance and me left and had to drive fifteen miles to Baylor Garland (HIGHLY recommend them, amazing staff).

So anyway, all that said: RUN. RUN WHILE YOU STILL CAN. This hospital is a joke.