Jeffrey Ryals

Review of Chippenham Johnston Willis Med...

My father was rushed to the hospital due to a (min...

My father was rushed to the hospital due to a (minor) stroke. The emergency team took him in immediately and began a full barrage of tests. In my opinion the emergency team did an outstanding job. I would gladly give them a 5 star rating on the experience that we had. However, the situation greatly changed once he was taken to a standard room. The 1st issue was confusion on which room he was supposed to go in. Once that was settled, there was miscommunication on when he would be going to 3 essential tests (MRI, CAT, and Echo). So he was sent for the CAT, later to find out that the MRI time slot was missed due to him being gone for the CAT. Since the MRI is difficult to get worked in, this caused an issue. Finally later that night, he gets worked back into the MRI. All the while, miscommunication as to where he is and where he should be next is concerning. And while he is off having the tests run, I'm in the room with he's minimally coherent room mate next door. The nurse for the room mate comes in to find that the person that should've been checking on him hasn't; and, the poor nurse finds a very smelly surprise all over the bed. As she cleans it up, the catheter breaks and goes all over the floor. She goes gets help and they all pitch in. Those are the nurses that go the extra mile. Unfortunately I didn't see that from the nurses on my father's side of the curtain. Granted, the first nurse and the last nurse did a good job, but the ones between those time frames did not. Which brings me back to the MRI/CAT scans being completed, but no one knew when the Echo would be occurring, just that it would be sometime tomorrow. So we tried to get some sleep. The next day, no one can tell us when the Echo would be done or where the doctor was. By the middle of the afternoon, the nurse brings my father medication, but he has already taken his medication (he has inoperable brain tumors, so he HAS to take his medicine 3 times a day). The nurse lectures us on her having a degree and he can not be taking pills unless she specifically gives pills to him. But when I indicate that the medicine is required 3 times a day for the inoperable tumors (the morning and mid day she should've delivered, but now it was mid afternoon), she had no rebuttal. Anyway, we have now sat nearly an entire day waiting on the Echo guy to visit. When he does visit, my father (whom was very ready to leave) commented that it took a long time to finally get the test run. The Echo person informs us that my father was just added to the list; and, that he (the Echo guy) had been sitting around with nothing to do for the past couple hours. So the test was ran and we finally get discharged (this was now Saturday night). The only thing left is to pick up the reports and the CD of all the tests ran so my father (whom is from Mississippi, up visiting) could take the info back to his local doctors. It is supposed to be ready Sunday, but from the consistent confusion, I expected it would be Monday, if at all. So Monday, I call just to make sure its ready at the nurses station, which is where they told me to go. And as expected, no one had a clue as to what I'm talking about, but they would look into it and have the info ready by the time I got there. Due to the recent experiences, I called the Radiology department to see if I could get the information there, which I could. When I arrived at the hospital on Monday evening, the Radiology department had everything ready and I provided the required information they needed to allow me to pick up the records. But out of my own personal interests, I went to the nurse's station, as originally instructed, to see if they had the reports/CD; and, they did not. So 5 stars for the emergency staff and 2 stars for the follow up staff and extremely poor miscommunication (but again, not all were sub-par, I did see some very capable nurses there, and the two doctors we saw seemed very capable as well). So I gave 3 stars as a middle of the road rating.