Hospital Stories...

[Special K]

Yeah, I certainly understand that. I just remembered that the doctor at the hospital told me that he did not think that I needed surgery. :doh: Everyone else I saw had a very different opinion.

Eh, yeah. That's ridiculous. I mean, the fracture has to be pretty angulated for the doc's to that quickly determine it needed surgical intervention. I would love to know if he'd gotten an ortho. consult on your case before he let you go......

[Mufumonk]

I was talking with my mom tonight, who is a certified nurse and works in a hospital. She occasionally tells me about her patients, but lately she's been telling me of a lot of disturbing things that go on in the Hospital she works in. She recalls instances of the night crew in particular, which features neglect, irresponsibility and sometimes nurses being physically (sometimes mentally) rough with their patients.

One story that especially stuck with me, was that my Mom went in one morning and decided to check on one of the stroke patients she had been talking to the other day. The patient is in her early 60's, so it's not like she suffers from dementia or anything...and she was telling my mother about how nasty some of her caretakers are and that she was contemplating making a complaint to management, but was scared to do so because she feared she might be retaliated against.

This really disturbed me, because it just made it sound almost evil...and I started to wonder if this is at all a common thing in some hospitals??? No one should have to be in a hospital and be literally AFRAID for their safety...it just really rubbed me the wrong way.

Has anyone else ever been in the care of a hospital and experienced anything like what I've mentioned? Or even just general neglect and inept care?

You're not talking about Doctor's Community Hospital in Greenbelt, are you? Their care for the elderly is mortifying.

[ljs]

My bad experience was with the military doctors, hence my reason for being so against the government run healthcare.

I was diagnosed w/Asthma and eventually medically discharged from the USAF. I never had a breathing problem in my life, and had been sick for months. I fought for almost a year to stay in, appealing all the way to the Sec of Air Force. After I got home, an Asthma clinic had an advertisement about paying people to test a new medicine. I went in there and they tested me. Then got pretty upset like i was trying to screw them over and just get money. They said I wasn't even close to having Asthma. When I gave the doctor all my military paperwork/test results- he said I either had a very severe case of Bronchitis (which I had quite a bit growing up), or even walking Pneumonia.

I was going to try and get back in, but then I was hired into law enforcement.

My mom and sister are nurses. My grandma is retired nurse, one uncle is a doctor. They get together and tell all sorts of stories. My mom works in Peds at the hospital, and also a surgical nurse for a local clinic. My sister is a Labor/Delivery nurse- also works with premies. I give people in medicine props- it's a hard job, long schooling and no one is perfect.

I'll add this- people have one or two bad experiences with a doctor and move on. Yet someone has a bad experience with a cop and all of a sudden every cop in the world is a piece of ****. I don't get it.

[lovetoaster]

The one problem with threads like this is that most of us will never recognize when a nurse, doctor, or health care provider goes way above the call of duty. Anything that goes well or amazingly for the most part is par for the course. All the things that go right are invisible. It's the the tiniest things that go wrong that we notice.

Well said. But that is just the way it is with a lot of professions. It is supremely difficult, and sometimes thankless. You have to be a special person to be a doctor.

With that being said, if I saw the doctor that performed surgery on me every day, I would stop him and thank him every time. It might get a little creepy after a while, but whatever.

But seriously, I know I had a pretty serious injury and things could have turned a lot different than they did. But other than it taking a few minutes for my ankle to loosen up in the morning and a nice scar on the side of my leg, there have not been many lingering issues. I was told that I was going to need rehab for a few months after my last surgery at least to get back to normal and I was good to go in a few weeks.

All of this happened when I was out of town, and when I came back to see a few very respected local orthopedic doctors their first response when looking at the x-rays was "wow, he did a great job."

So thanks Dr. Parr :thumbsup:

[Mongo2365]

My wife is a nurse and she has told me some good stories but this one really sticks out for me:

She was taking care of a lady who was a quadriplegic. This lady had been in the hospital for some time and was just a mean and nasty woman. She used to have the NAs wheel her outside so she could smoke and get some air. One day she had been gone for awhile so my wife and the other nurses started to get a little worried and called security to help find her. They found her at a park near the hospital with one of the NAs high on meth and with heroin on her. Turns out that she has been doing this for months and some of the NAs were buying the drugs for her and shooting her up. Well, a bunch of NAs got fired and they kicked her out of the hospital.

[stickyshooZ]

You're not talking about Doctor's Community Hospital in Greenbelt, are you? Their care for the elderly is mortifying.

No, Shady Grove hospital.

[desioreo87]

Im not so fond of hospitals. Every hospital i have been in, (3), i have experienced terrible bedside manner and a general lack of interest in patients. Maybe they have been desensitized, they do see a lot of tough things everyday, but I was still shocked that my cousins weren't being treated so well by the staff.

[stickyshooZ]

On another note...

My father had knee replacement a couple years back and the nurses were often late in giving him the care he needed. He couldn't walk right after surgery and he had to use the bathroom and no one came in time. My dad is a proud guy, so he was extremely upset by that. I was told that it had happened, but I pretended like nothing happened, cause I know dad was probably very embarrassed by it, even though it wasn't his fault and he couldn't do anything about it.