A smaller hospital with that hometown feel, but with all of the modern technological conveniences the larger facilities have to offer. Very knowledgeable and friendly staff that take the time get to know your name, instead of just your room number.
A lot of people give stars because of what the food was like, they had to wait "forever" for their pain medication, they didn't have enough cable channels to choose from, etc. Let's be real, hospitals are not hotels. If you are a patient, you are usually 1 of 8 and upwards for that one nurse for the day. Also, the good ole days of nursing are dead and gone. No longer can they just run and get that medication and rush right back to your room with it. They have to hope and pray that they didn't get stuck with one of the computers that "lag" for the day, pull up your record, look at when you can have that medication again, then go into a different room and type your name in a different machine, scroll through the list to find the correct medication (and hope that the nurse in front of them didn't just pull the last one and they have to wait for pharmacy to bring more), take that medication back to the "hopefully not lagging computer", pull the patient's medication record back up, and then roll the cart into the patient's room and confirm correct patient, hospital number, allergies, then scan the patient's armband (praying that the scanner works) and then scan the medication, ask all of the pain questions that pop up on the screen and click on the patients replies, get a scrub hub and clean the port site to be used, then push the medication over the recommended amount of time, all the while, watching the IV site for any signs of infiltration and watching to make sure that the patient doesn't have a reaction to the medication. Yes, that's just to give one medication.
So, yes, it probably did take your nurse longer than you thought it should to get back with your pain medication, or whatever medication or assistance that you called out for in the first place. Because, in actuality, you are also probably 3rd or 4th in line on top of that. Unfortunately, this is where the profession has ended up. When you look out of your room and see the nurses on the computers, they are not playing or "googling", they are documenting their every move, because that is what it has come to. Documentation has sadly trumped patient care these days. It takes twice as long to chart one thing that you have done on one patient than to actually perform the act of care.
Please keep this in mind when giving ratings. If your nurse seems frustrated the whole time during your stay, I can guarantee you that they probably are. The reason that they chose the nursing profession was to help take care of the sick, and instead, they spend more than half of their shift documenting what little they actually got to do, while dreaming about what all they wish they could have really done for them. So, if you left a facility as a name rather than a number, then you found a gem, and North Baldwin Infirmary is a gem. Yes, you still have to wait, the food isn't always the greatest, the nurses are overwhelmed and frustrated at times, but they do all that they can to make you feel at "home." read more