Saint Luke's East Hospital

They have an outstanding doctor.

Overall 4th floor nursing was lackluster in patient care and response to reasonable requests. Also nurse in surgical prep did not respond to our requests, but looked for ways around them. The Emergency room Doctors and Nurses were outstanding. I would definitely go there again if I only needed the emergency room for stitches or something. After this we were on the 4th Floor Medical Telemetry ( med-telly) These were directly observed actions and experiences.((I was there most of the time and went home to sleep) Fourth Floor "MED-TELLY: 1. Since internal bleeding was in question and the ER doctor asked about us about blood in the "stool", I mentioned this to each of our day nurses for 2 days. The hospitalist Dr. assigned to us ordered it at some unknown point. The plastic toilet attachment to collect the sample arrived the 3rd day a few hour before we were released to go home. * My friends who are nurses and nursing students said this is something a nurse can do, ( .....it is not practicing or diagnosing etc.) I am disappointed because: They did not respond to my information about this, or what seemed logical and obvious when being checked for internal bleeding, and missed 2 days of stools. 2. My husband has feeding tube because he is on chemo and can't eat enough calories right now. Even though I advised them that that the tube must be flushed with water every 4 hours they did not do it. Of course the tube clogged .Then they unclogged it with the $10.00 declogging tool that we purchased and brought. Event though my husband asked they to wash it for reuse, it was stuffed back in the bag in a way that bent the tip beyond reuse and dirty too. Even after this they continued to not flush the tube. * My friends who are nurses and nursing students say that in this instance a nurse should have a Doctors instruction for this, but the can respond a patient requests that are reasonable . So I continued to ask that the tube be flushed. On the 2nd day when the flush was again overdue the nurse responded that she was waiting for some equipment to come up that did the flush automatically. So flushes were doctor ordered but still not happening on time. I am disappointed because: Reasonable requests weren't very important and standard care for feeding tube patients was not sorely lacking. . Feeding tube flushing is completely standard I do not think it should have taken 2 days. I believe a sharp nurse would have ask the doctor and had this arranged the 1st day. After the order to flush the tube at the 4 hour mark came from the doctor, patient care was not priority but a machine that made it easier. 3. Since blood tests for anemia were important in his diagnosis the Doctor ordered some blood work. I wanted to discuss this with the gastroenterologist so I got the last two blood tests for comparison and brought them to the hospital about 9:00 am. The nurse Tiffany make copies for his file. When we got to the surgical waiting room neither the consent form was in this file or the blood work records I brought. They sent the consent down in a tube, so I specifically requested that they send the records down the tube too and offered go back to the 4th floor to get them also. The surgical prep nurse told me she sent the request. When I saw the doctor he did not have them, this was my only opportunity and last meeting with gastroenterologist so the opportunity was gone. When returning to the 4th floor they were on a shelf in his room. I asked Tiffany about this and she just had not got them in the file before it went down. She explained that someone could have had the file when the copy was made. This makes perfect sense and I totally see how that could happen. But why was it not sent down the tube when I requested it???? What happened was that Tiffany was about to send them down when the surgery nurse called back and told her the Gastro Dr. said it was okay he did not have to have them. I am disappointed because: Both nurses because did not respond to a the patient, or a reasonable request. But looked for ways to not respond. When asked, the Gastrointerologist ( who did not know I wanted to talk to him about it) said that he didn't have to have the report . Very interesting that when I tried to explain to Tiffany that it was me that wanted ask questions / discuss blood work with Doctor. , She just said " doctor said he didn't have to have it" She repeated this several time after I gave up even trying to explain my reason for wanting the Doc. to see the blood work report. She seemed oblivious to the idea of responding to a patient request. 4. A few small unsanitary things happened: Feeding tube tip is to be protected and sanitary cap when unattached to patient. Tiffany did not do this, but left the tip lying around. She did clean it before reattaching at my request. I am disappointed because: This sanitation training should be standard. It seems obvious also since the tube tip is being attached to a person and going inside them. This is rather the least thing that happened, and since Tiffany did respond to my request it is a huge improvement.