4 years ago
My mother was out of town for work and required me...
My mother was out of town for work and required medical assistance and this was a total waste of a trip to receive treatment. She was having pain in her arm/shoulder area and was experiencing extreme vertigo causing her to vomit with any movement and rated her pain as a 9 (my mother has the pain tolerance of a grown man who can rip his own ingrown toenails out without even flinching) so I knew that this was pretty serious. I drove 2 hours to be by my mother's side. First, we specifically asked for a medication for vertigo after all the test were run in which the doctor replied "There is no specific medication for vertigo." Really?!? Um....Antivert, maybe? They also never offered not one time to medicate my mother for pain/nausea even right before she was discharged. I asked the nurse if she could be medicated since we were out of town and did not know when or where we would get prescriptions filled. She stated she would go ask the doctor if that would be possible in which she sent a different person in to tell us that she would not be medicated prior to discharge and that "she can just go get her prescriptions filled." At this time, my mother still rated her pain as a 9 and could not move without vomiting. While waiting for an hour for the doctor or nurse to return to my mother's room after he told her someone would be right back to discharge her, she walked up to nurse's station where she found the doctor standing and asked how much longer it would be & he actually told her that he forgot about her! This may sound like an impatient patient but wouldn't you be impatient if you had pain and nausea that you weren't being treated for? I mean, this is a place where you come to be treated, right? Also, at discharge I asked the nurse if the doctor could specifically prescribe Antivert for her vertigo in which she replied "You never told us you had vertigo." Wow.......I bet we said vertigo, left arm pain, nausea, vomiting a thousand times while sitting in the Emergency Room. All of my mom's paperwork had her last name misspelled and after the third time of telling them that is was incorrect with no change, we just took it with us. Finally, after everything was done and she was ready to leave, the person who took out her iv turned around and threw her trash in the garbage and said "Alright, ya'll have a good day" and walked out. Is it not required for staff to assist or at least offer to assist patients to their vehicles? Especially if one of their complaints was vertigo and were barely able to walk without stumbling? The waiting room was packed with people standing waiting to be seen but does that make it ok to give patients crappy medical attention? I've been a nurse for 7 years gaining the majority of my experience from acute care hospitals and long term care facilities so I understand exactly what it's like to work under pressure in the medical field. If I could rate this with zero stars, I would. This place needs to hire staff that actually know what the hell they're doing.