MALPRACTICE AT EVERY TURN! IF YOU LIVE IN SW MISSOURI, SAVE A LIFE AND GO TO BARNES IN ST. LOUIS!!! COX SOUTH IS NOT GOING TO READ THE PATIENT'S CHARTS. THEY ARE NOT GOING TO DO PROACTIVE MEDICINE. I'm sorry about the all caps. . . but I can not stress this enough.
The short version. My father showed up w/ pneumonia, was placed in ICU, and waited 48 hours to have his antibiotics administered, all while the hospital was trying to chase down pulmonary issues. After 4 days in the hospital, they still have had no chest scan. They managed to diminish his health to the point of needing a ventilator. . this took them a few days to achieve, but they managed it none the less. They CERTAINLY have a system where the nurses are not encouraged to think for themselves, where they do ZERO proactive medicine, and everyone there thinks that this is how real hospitals operate. Newsflash: It isn't. This hospital is a joke.
The longer version:
My father is currently in Cox South. After working as a pharmacist for Cox South for 15-20 years, he now has to suffer the complete lack of care and incompetence they're dishing out . . . even in the ICU!
I'll try to make this as short as possible. My father was ill and went to the Cox South ER. After four hours he was not seen, so he went home. The next day he went to Mercy, where he was diagnosed with pneumonia. The he went home. Two days later, he was still feeling ill, and had a car accident, at which point he had a broken vertebrae, a broken cheekbone, and a broken rib. He was taken to Cox South, who saw him and dismissed him on the same day. Over the next few days, my father was having issues breathing and was passing out, and an ambulance finally took him back to Cox South.
After a very short stay in the hospital (1 day), he was transferred to ICU, which as the name implies, is supposed to be the best care any hospital can provide. They knew he came in with existing issues, which they were not to blame for, but they also knew that he was having issues breathing, which is ultimately why he came back to the hospital. . . . One would think that they would be looking into a pulmonary blockage. Not so. They seemed to dally around, finding it okay to simply try and maintain his issues. No aggressive investigating or testing. Now, they did something. . . but nothing to address the actual reason that brought him to the hospital.
Luckily for us, we have an highly educated nurse in the immediate family with 40 years of real medical experience. This family member was able to not only assist in communicating the treatment into terms I was able to understand, but was also able to try and communicate with the staff what our concerns were. Not only that, they were able to help point out what we felt was being overlooked. To their credit, the nursing staff was always very friendly, but they passed the buck constantly. They were always saying 'that's not the way we do it here', or 'I can try to pass that on to the Dr.. . . ' or something along those lines. However, we then had to start all over when we came back after shift change, as nothing was ever noted in the chart.
We told every nurse for 48 hours that our father had pneumonia, and that Cox was not giving him is antibiotic for it, all the while they were mystified by the difficulty he was having breathing. Guess what? Not one single nurse wrote that in the chart or passed it on to the physician. After 48 hours, our family members simply refused to leave until they ordered the antibiotics and started administering them. This took 3 1/2 hours. We also (thanks to the nurse in our family) had to point out that they needed to draw blood samples for future testing before antibiotics were introduced. The nurses actually argued with us about this, but eventually gave in.
After 48 hours in the ICU, all while no antibiotics were given for a preexisting issue, and with no chest scan/MRI done, my father finally deteriorated to the point of having to be put on a ventilator. Surprise, surprise.
A day later, a respiratory therapist came in, and during our consult, the nurse in our family asked about the AA gradient. The RT said that he/she didn't know what it was, but that the machine could simulate it. He/she didn't know it, or seem to be concerned why he/she should be paying attention to it. The nurse in our family checked the barometric pressure that day, whipped out a calculator, and figured out the AA gradient in about 20 seconds. I'm not kidding. The AA gradient showed that our fathers lungs were not processing oxygen, and to what degree they were not (based on a numbers scale). Huh, that seems pretty interesting information to have if you were supposedly tracking down how severe a patient's lung conditions were. read more