| rev:text
| - Letter I wrote to the patient satisfaction group, I will post their reply but this describes my experience. I hope mine is a rare occurrence:
5 months ago I gave birth at your hospital. While the birthing experience was a long induction (3 days) which ended in an unexpected c-section, I have no complaints about the care I received in labor and delivery. The nurses were wonderful and competent and the anesthesiology staff was top notch. Unfortunately, the care I received in postpartum was extremely disappointing, unsafe, and unsanitary and I feel resulted in preventable problem for both me and my new baby. My baby got jaundice so severe it resulted in 2 extra days of being hospitalized for light therapy and monitoring for weight loss. While I am aware a lot of babies get jaundice but as a registered nurse myself, I know it can be prevented by good nursing care. I had to ask several times for a lactation consultant to come help me with breastfeeding and when she came she gave me a hand out and told me to call the nurse the next time baby needed to feed so she could help. When I did that the call light would not get answered for several minutes plus about 20 more minutes for someone to come to my room and my request for them to contact the lactation consultant was ignored as they never showed up. The nurses would proclaim they would help but when I would call and they would eventually come into the room, they would attempt to help with getting the baby latched and once they thought she was they would leave right away or it took so long for them to get there that I had already attempted and needed to supplement because it wasn't working/hurt too much. When my daughter's weight kept decreasing and bilirubin levels increased the need for help with breastfeeding increased and still no one helped until the doctor recommended supplementing with formula which I happily did if it meant my baby would get better. I had to ask about getting a pump to help get my milk to come in and even getting that took a day and still no help setting it up or cleaning the supplies after they were used. I recall the first few hours we arrived in the room, the nurse wrote on the white board 3 education videos to watch and gave us the log to keep track of everything. The nurse would take the log and write down whatever she needed to chart but had she done any critical thinking, she would have seen that the feedings were not very frequent/long and diapers were not as frequent as they should have been. Never was the video content discussed with us or were we asked if we had any questions. As new parents, our education was 3 videos and whatever handouts they left for us to read on our own. Some nurses would do a full physical exam on me, while others never even looked at my C-section incision (even though I know they charted a full assessment). My linens went unchanged for 4 days which resulted in me having to change my own. When I was allowed to shower, no one helped me into the shower (had the rooms with the jet tubs, not a walk in shower) and looking back, I was way too drugged up on pain medications and I was lucky I did not fall. None of the nurses asked me how many pads I was going through or if I had any large clots and getting those re-supplied took hours. I emptied our trash and linen bags and my husband had to clean up the room daily.
I do not know why my experience was so horrible. Perhaps the nurses were short staffed and had more patients/more demanding patients than they usually do. Maybe the nurses who took care of me were from float pool or floating from a different unit and didn't usually care for postpartum women. I am fortunate that I am a nurse and in nursing school went through my rotation in OB but that was 8 years ago and I was recovering from a traumatic birthing experience, so if that was the reason the nurses felt comfortable not making me a priority patient I ask they reconsider that practice in the future. Whatever the route cause, I hope sharing with you my experience helps improve something for future patients because I feel strongly that it can and should be improved. Should you need clarification on anything please let me know.
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)