Baptist Health Medical Center (COE) Hospital
Did my surgery on a Monday morning....
The surgery itself went without a hitch. Spent a couple of nights in the hospital per doctor's typical instructions. The hospital staff were few and far between of what I would want as nursing staff go but the LPNs were on it to get me medicines as needed. There were huge inadequacies in my opinion with some of the RN staff and thank goodness my parents were there to advocate for me. The surgery room didn't place me on an a pain pack and the floor RN went to her supervisor to make an appropriate complaint. Once the pain pump came in and she attached the IV was not properly placed in my vain so it went all up under my skin and my arm became swollen. She then proceeded to go to lunch and ask the person covering for her to place a new IV line in me. That nurse got the IV in went to check the IV bag and decided that the fluid bag should wait til the RN came back from lunch before starting. In the mean time, the IV bag itself was leaking while the connectors to my IV line were on the floor. My mom slipped and almost fell from all the liquid on the floor. My father went to complain at the nurse's station and the Nurse Manager and a few other nurses came running to clean up the mess and my dad had to tell them to get a new IV bag altogether as the other had been contaminated. I finally got hooked up (this took at least two hours from start to finish). Later in the evening, we realized that my compression bags to my legs had not been on me for hours and my partner brought it to the nurse's attention who at first was sure that they were hooked up just not turned on (as though it mattered) and then realized that they had never been hooded up. After that, during the same night the CNAs kept coming by and waking me up to get my vitals saying they would come and walk me and finally I just had to make a nuisance of myself at 1 in the morning for the RN to finally say she would do it (when the CNAs were to do it). I thought that was mighty fine of her. Anyway, like I said I had the same LPN both nights and more specifically the night staff were better in my opinion. The next day went a little bit more smoothly and I was able to walk on my own or with family to help me. The CNAs almost did forget to empty my Foley saying I didn't have one and I had to tell them that I did and so that potential issue was diverted. Also, the hospital is being worked on for Maintenance. The whole time I was in the hospital they work working on the outside of the building at the same level as my room and had jackhammers working outside on the building by the windows to take out loose mortar and replace. The irony to that is you would see signs in the hallways saying 'Quiet please, healing in progress'. One nurse even commented that the patients on one end were complaining. She also stated that this type of work had been going on for years and will continue as the hospital is updating and adding. Unfortunately I had to go to this hospital for Bariatric surgery due to Insurance requirements for special certification for bariatric surgery and it's the only one close that I could find. Otherwise, I would have gone to where I had my gallbladder surgery a few years back at UAMS.
If seems to me that no hospital stay is perfect. Although the staff was reasonably responsive to my requests I was in recovery for 9 hours because no beds were available. Also, I had a semi-private room after requesting a private. My roommate unfortunately had hospital psychosis and was delusional. My family had to speak with a hospital administrator to get me out of that room and into a private. I wasn't able to rest or recover properly the first day and night.
The aide tried to serve me ice cream and full sugared juice and then argued with me when I told her I could not have them. The entire 4 days I was there no one even offered me a bath or bath supplies...we had to ask for them. Anytime we asked for anything, we usually had to ask twice and then wait another hour before we got the item if we even received it.