USC University Hospital Hospital

The only other issue I had was that they had placed me in a room with a woman with some kind of eye infection. I felt uncomfortable using the bathroom, as I had concerns about her touching the drainage from her eyes and then touching something that I would later touch and mistakenly make contact with the contaminent by rubbing my eyes or touching my facial mucous membranes without thinking and without washing my hands. I believe that they staffed our room with different nurses taking care of us to decrease the risk of cross contamination from the nursing staff.

Because of it's status as a teaching hospital and because Dr. Anthone is the director of the hospitals Bariatric program(among others) it is exceptionally well equipped to handle obese patients.
The staff has vast experience with patients of every size, including super-super morbidly obese patients, so they handle accomodating us very well.
The only down side to University Hospital is that it does not have an emergency room, so should something happen post-op you would have to go to a local hospital and hope the ER doctor knows about Duodenal Switch. You are evaluated at your local hospital and if you need hospitalization or emergency surgery, Dr Anthone is called and he makes arrangements for you to be transferred to University Hospital. I can honestly say that made me a little apprehensive when I was newly post-op because so many doctors are not as familiar with DS as they are with RNY. The upshot to that is, the surgeon is only a phone call away and he can instruct the local hospital on anything they may need.

Some of my nurses, Mecolle, Sun, Alex, and Yen, were very concerned and caring about me, helping to fill any needs ASAP. Others, however, couldn't have cared less...just a job. On my last day, I was released about 1:00pm, pending removal of my JP. My nurse had only 4 patients, and 2 of us had already been discharged, at least on paper; she ignored me the whole day, in spite of my needing a shower, pills crushed, the intern paged for drain removal, etc. and it wasn't until Mecolle came on duty at 7:00pm that multi pages were made to the intern and, finally, Dr K., prescriptions for home use were taken care of, and I was finally released at 9:00pm for my 2 hr drive home.
The care on that last day was so bad (up until the night shift) that I will never return there voluntarily.

The hospital itself was very good. I just personally got stuck with a lousy nurse who rarely came in to check on me. In fact, whenever I needed something, I would have to call him and he would often take a long time to respond, and sometimes he wouldn't even come at all.

If you have to be in the hospital USC UH is the way to go. The staff from admitting to the nurses were wonderful. I never felt as if I was bothering anyone, they were very attentive.

There were some language issues with some of the nurses, but otherwise, the nursing staff was very accomodating.

My first night was horrible...the nursing care was bad. Ignored...etc. But I changed rooms the next day and had wonderful nurses. Great!

I was prepared to be ignored and treated unfairly. My experience was the total opposite.

The only complaint that I do have is that they floor I was placed on after two days in ICU was horrible. They weren't very responsive. You had to call continuously if you needed something. I don't know if they were understaffed or what the problem was but I know it affected me as well as my roommate. Otherwise it is very clean. I also felt the staff didn't offer as much help as I would have liked.

I was treated well from day one. The hospital was very clean, well equipped.
The key was the staff. I had everything I needed when I needed it. They helped me with everything, including a shower whenever I wanted one. They were kind and pleasant at the same time that they were professional.
The accomodations were great and the staff was superior.