S P

Review of North Florida Regional Medical...

As a nurse myself, I was extremely disappointed wi...

As a nurse myself, I was extremely disappointed with how my family was treated by some of the staff at NFRMC. My father, who is suffering from lung cancer was being transported from the ER to CCU, and his ER nurse Heather asked a student nurse to come along "just for fun". I have no problem with this as I was once a student nurse learning clinical skills myself.
What I did have a problem with however is when my mother and I arrived to the CCU (separately of course, they wouldn't let us ride on the elevator with them) and we seen them going into his new room, Heather rudely stated to us "No, no, no...I told you to go to the waiting room". The room was plenty big enough for my mom and myself to stay while they settled my father in, and there was no emergent situation going on that we would be in the way of, it just seemed as though we were inconveniencing them. When I asked if we could just wait outside the room, another nurse mentioned something about "HIPAA". As a nurse, I'm very familiar with HIPAA laws. HIPAA is not violated unless a medical professional is discussing a patient's private health information where they shouldn't be. It was just an excuse, that nurse probably couldn't even tell me what the HIPAA acronym stood for. I was hoping my dad's new nurse in CCU, Charlotte would be our voice of reason, but she was of no help either.
I just found it interesting that the student nurse who had been in my dad's life for about an hour could stay, as Heather put it, "just for fun", but this man's wife and child who had been in his life for 40 years were forced to wait more than 30 minutes in the waiting room. That's 30 more minutes I could have spent with my dying father and my mother could have spent with her husband. Right now, every second is precious.
I have NEVER in my nursing career treated a patient's family like that. Family members are ESSENTIAL in providing quality care, not optional.
Thank God for people like Steve and Frank in RT, Beth in Case Management and Jeff the Nurse Tech or I would have NO faith in NFRMC's staff at all.