Crittenton Hospital Hospital
Again, I had a good experience. The only bad one was on the morning of my third day since surgery, I needed a nurse very badly. I started pushing my button at 6:45 (the beginning of shift change). No one answered the button at all. When my husband came in at 8:00, I was in tears and he went and got the nurse and the PCA. THey said they had no idea that I had pushed the button. Looks like someone just turning it off. Good thing I was not dying.
I found the nurses and nurse assistants very slow to answer the call button. There were a few exceptions, Ken an NA that I had a few nights was really good. He was also very encouraging about me getting through the healing stages. Joe, the nurse I had on the day I was being discharged was wonderful as well. He saw me walking around the halls and stopped to talk to me a few times even on the days that he wasn't my nurse. The tech when I had my Upper GI was terrible! She was so full of attitude and you could just tell she didn't want to be there. In general the nurses didn't know how to use the foot pumps that help prevent blood clots. They really didn't care if they were on or off and some couldn't figure out how to use the machine. Dr. L was very annoyed with them and gave them a piece of his mind one morning. I questioned them a few times and actually had to instruct them to turn the pad around and where to velcro it on at. There were a couple of shifts that my drains weren't emptied. I also saw an NA making fun of a man she had to push in an oversized wheelchair to another NA. Sad.
My husband had a roux-n-y here. Unfortunately, he had a leak. First, he was put on a cardiac floor not a surgical floor. So the staff had very poor skills for assessing comlications r/t the surgery. His pain was through the ceiling the next day and the nurses thought he was a wimp. However, he was never assessed for pain, he had to ask for meds. Then he had to wait at a minimum 30 minutes. I also never once saw a nurse look at his surgical wounds. But the biggest issue was the pain...pain is one of the biggest clues to a leak. This staff is not properly educated to assess when things go wrong. As a result, my husband ended up with an abcess, sepsis, ARDS and on a vent.Three surgeries later he was transferred to ICU in a induced coma. Unfortunately, it got worse. We had to lifeflight him to U of M where he was placed on an Osillating vent that breaths 300 times minute. He had a temp of 105 and was hypoxic for over a half and hour. U of M saved his life. One month after the first surgery he came home. As a nurse and part of the medical community I would recommend anyone having bariatric bypass to find a facility for equipped and trained to handle the unexpected potential complications associated with these surgeries.
I received great care, was not neglected or ignored. Staff were cheerful and supportive. The only thing that bothered me were the nurses in the recovery room who spoke about me and my weight not realizing I had started to come through and could hear them. Nurses on my floor though were excellent and sensitive to my weight issues. All in all it was great as far as hospitals go.
On the pre-surgical side, everything was wonderful. The staff was excellent and I couldn't have asked for better care. However, post-op, once I was assigned to a room, with the exception of Joe, the weekday nurse who was outstanding, I found almost all of the nurses to be less than knowledgable about some of the items I was required to use (e.g. walking simulation pump) and again with the exception of Joe, I found it took them nearly half an hour to answer the buzzer when needed.