Quote:
Originally Posted by PatandBob
After having read and heard about so many negative experiences at the Villages ER, I'd like to share our experience.
Due to severe pain from a ruptured disc, our PCP advised my husband to head to the ER. Within one hour of our arrival (by ambulance), Bob was evaluated by a nurse and the PA, and received his first pain medication. The nurse was outstanding - compassionate, informative, and attentive.
Bob was admitted and had surgery a couple days later. Overall we were very satisfied with the care he received in the ER and on the floor. My one suggestion for improvement would be their discharge procedure. The surgeon signed off at 7:30 AM. The floor nurse called the hospitalist three times to get a ball park idea of when we could expect him to finish the discharge and she never received a call back. After eight hours of waiting, another doctor came to finalize the discharge.
I did feel sorry for my husband's roommate. He had no one with him most of the time and for three days straight I listened to him ask the nurses to change the dressing on his wound. He told them it was to be changed daily. Every time they told him, "yes, I'll be right back to do it" but only after the third day when he complained to his doctor was it finally done.
A word of advice for those who recently moved to the Villages. We'd only been here a few weeks when Bob needed medical care. Being new, we did not at that time have a PCP and because of that we had weeks of delay for treatment. If you haven't established yourself with doctors, do so asap. It would have been far less frustrating navigating the medical system around here if we already had a PCP.
|
Working on the 2nd floor as an RN I agree with most of your suggestions. Having a primary doc in the area is very important. You may have still had to wait for your discharge even with a primary as your hospital admit doc since they usually do all their normal practice during the day and THEN see patients at the hospital in the evening (but this can vary by PCP). Only the doc assigned to the case, whether it be a hospitalist or the patients PCP, can do the discharge. As nurses we have to wait until the discharge orders (meds, activity, diet, followup care etc.) have been written before we can execute the orders. This does take many hours sometimes.
As far as the dressing change goes you have to know the whole story before you could comment. All wounds that are dressed have an order in the chart regarding subsequent changes (when, how and what materials). It is very possible that it was a 3 day change (in fact this is very common). Sometimes the patient may think it should be changed but they may or may not know. I have also had patients who said "when are you going to change my dressing?" and in fact I had just changed it that morning! Some patients are very confused.