"Immanuel needs to seriously consider having private rooms, especially on the surgical floor. I felt that I was not getting enough rest or privacy during my four day stay. I had two horrible room mates -- the first was loud, used profanity and vulgar language, I'm sure that she had mental problems due to her constant crying, screaming, swearing, etc. and worst of all, she had visitors all day long from 8:00 AM until 9:00 PM! Her visitors were also loud and used profanity, they came over to my side of the pulled curtain to look me over, and I even had to ask a couple of them to leave the room in the morning when I was getting a sponge bath! I couldn't get any rest and felt like I had NO privacy. I could not tolerate her behavior any longer and at about 11:00 AM asked to be moved or to have her moved. I was told that the Head nurse would have to decide if that was OK. I waited all day and nothing was done. Many hours later, I asked the evening shift if I could be moved and to their credit, I was moved within 2 hours. I had two blessed hours to rest by myself before they brought in a new roommate at 9:00 PM. From 9:00PM until early the next morning, my new roommate was talking in a very loud voice on her cell phone, telling all of her friends how she had just had "my dead baby sucked out of me" and then in the same sentence, she proclaimed that she was going to have a good time while she was in the hospital and was going to treat it as a "vacation". This girl spent what seemed like the whole night on her cell phone speaking in ebonics and vulgar language and begging people for money. When she wasn't on her cell phone she was eating everything in site (she had the nursing staff running for food all night) and smacking her lips and sucking the food off her fingers. This creature, for I cannot refer to her as human, was so repulsive and disgusting to me that when I was offered the chance to leave the hospital a day early, I jumped at the chance.
Besides having horrible roommates, my other concern was the lack of response to my needs by the nursing staff. Although I can say that I never met anyone on the staff during my stay that was unprofessional or unpleasant, the response time to requests was unforgivably long.
For example, I was given an IV bolus (sp) of potassium at about 9:00AM. As soon as the nursing student started it, I had extreme pain at my IV site. I told her this and she turned down the rate that the IV would run and told me that potassium does burn a bit. Unfortunately, because the rate that the IV ran was lowered, it meant that I had this pain for 7 hours! At one point it became so painful that I thought that there must be something wrong with it so I rang for a nurse. I was told over the intercom that someone would be in. I waited another 5 minutes (still experiencing extreme pain) and then rang again. This time I told the person on the intercom that I needed to have a nurse come in right away because I was in great pain. She informed me that a nurse would be with me soon. I waited and waited and after about 15 minutes or so the pain abated to a tolerable level. Finally, after 35 minutes (I know because I was watching the clock) a student nurse walked in to check it. She said that "it shouldn't hurt that bad" like I was making it up! She then left after doing absolutely nothing. By the time that the IV bag finally ended at about 4:00 PM I was in tears due to the pain that had now spread from my IV site all over my hand and wrist. The nurse came in and ultimately the regular saline IV had to be re-started at another site secondary to the pain at the original site. I am writing this 8 days after the fact and my hand is still tender. I can't believe that anyone should be made to suffer the way that I had to that day.
Another example of staff communication problems occurred the night of my surgery. I was taken to a room after surgery at about 4:30PM and was using a morphine pump for pain. At about 11:00PM I experienced intense nausea and began dry heaving. This was of course very painful and potentially dangerous as I had just had stomach surgery. I told the nurse that I didn't want the morphine any longer because it was making me sick. She turned off the morphine pump at around 11:30 PM. Little did I know that by refusing the morphine that I wouldn't get any other pain medication for the duration of the night as the nurse said that she had no orders from the surgeon for another pain medication. I went from 11:30 PM until 9:00AM the next day without pain medications within 12 hours of surgery! Inexcusable treatment!
I can only assume from the delays in nursing care that Immanuel must be experiencing a nusing shortage. If not a shortage of nurses, I guess that it's simply a matter of the nurses not seeing patient care as their top priority. In any event, I would never recommend Immanuel Medical Center to anyone. "
