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February 12 The Worst Hospital EVERChildren's Specialized Hospital in New Brunswick NJ has got to be the worst experience with a "professional" staff I have ever had.
Here is my story. On December 28th 2007 there was an accident and my daughter was seriously injured. She spent 4 days in ICU in Morristown Memorial's Children's Hospital and another 3 days in the normal pediatric unit there. They recommended that she be sent the Children's Specialized for her inpatient rehab. We didn't know much about it but the staff at Morristown Memorial highly recommended it. Since our experience with the Morristown facility was exceptional we decided to go with their recommendation. We were also told that the building was one of their new buildings and would be able to get transferred there shortly. We were told that every room had sleeping accommodation for the parents and that there would be no issue having a new born staying with us. We had no clue what horror lie ahead.
On Friday January 4th we were transferred to Children's Specialized via medical transport. The building is attached to Robert wood Johnson Hospital and Bristol Myer Squibb's Children's Hospital so at first it appeared that it would be a very well run business. The first thing I noticed when I got there was it was in the middle of downtown New Brunswick and the only parking around it was couple spaces in front of the building and a parking garage next to it. At the time I thought nothing of the parking issue. More on that to come....
We arrive in the hospital and the security staff sends up upstairs. The security in the building looks very good, every door is locked by a card swipe. My daughter is then brought to her room where I right away notice problems. She shares a room with another patient but I notice that the one side of the room is extremely smaller than the other side. On top of that I also don't see anywhere that we (me or my wife) could sleep. So I get a chance to talk with the admitting Nurse (Jerry) who doesn't seem too friendly at all. She takes my information and then asks if I have any questions. My first question was "Were do I sleep? I was told there was a parent bed next to each child's bed." She told me that because I had an "A" side we don't get a bed but we get a chair that folds back. I told her there wasn't a "chair" in the room either so they went and got me a chair. This thing was about as wide as I am and only about 5 ft long when laying down. I'm a little annoyed but we move on. I tell her (Jerry) that me and my wife will be switching on the weekends but she will be here with our 5 week old son (my wife has to stay home with the other 3 kids). She interrupts me and tells me that no children under 5 years old are allowed in the hospital. I tell her that my wife is breast feeding and this is the only way we can work out being here. She tells me she can't help and tells me that the policy says the baby can't be there. I again remind her that the baby is breast feeding and because of work I can't be there all the time with my daughter. My wife and me argue with her for quite some time and then she says she will talk to someone in administration. A few minutes later she say the hospital is willing to allow the baby to come into the hospital for 1 hour a day. This is absurd since the drive to the hospital is almost an hour too. Also she says the baby isn't allowed in the room with my daughter.... She suggests my wife pump her milk instead.... So now me and my wife are very shocked because we only agreed to go there because we were told there would be no problems with the baby being there. Alrighty... On with the show. I ask the nurse then, can you get me a hospital grade breast pump... nope can't do that either.
Fine, I go back and sit with my daughter when the doctor come in and introduces himself. Dr. Y is his name. He isn't American and is hard to understand. He tells me he thinks from the info he got from the hospital in Morristown that my daughter should be there for 3 or 4 weeks. He then disappears never to be seen again.
Ok, so I turn on TV for my daughter to watch and look for Disney channel (after all it is a Kid's Hospital). Guess what, they don't have Disney channel. Wow, can this get any better? What they have for kids is PBS kids, Nick, and Cartoon Network. Everything else is adult channels. Too bad the only thing my daughter watches is Disney.
I next decided to try to get some work done since it doesn't look like I'll be leaving the hospital at all. I turn my laptop on and call the IT guy to connect me to their wireless network. I get online after a few minutes and try to connect my Cisco VPN client. HAHAHA I should have know, but they don't allow secure communication to go outbound from their network. I call the IT guy again and let him know and he asks for more information. I get him the info needed to unblock the VPN client (ports numbers and IP addresses) but find out that their network guys are too dumb to know how to re-configure their own network. I offer my assistance to re-config it but no, I'm not allowed to help. So now I can't work remotely from the hospital. Their next suggestion was to BUY my own Verizon broadband card!!!! WHAT A JOKE. Ok, I'm stressing and need a break so I log onto Bungie.net. OMG you'll never guess... that website is BLOCKED because of content!!!
Dinner time comes around and I go searching for food. In Morristown they had free food and drinks in the parent's kitchen. Well I go to the parents kitchen and find there is nothing provided by the staff for parents, NOTHING. Not a soda, not a bagel, zilch. Ok, so I ask where is the cafe, and find out it is downstairs. I head down and find out that they don't accept credit cards. I go looking for and ATM to find it across the street inside Robert wood Johnson's lobby. Ok, got cash now back to food. Uh-oh cafe closes at 6 and it is 6:10. WTF!!!! There is no food provided for parents, and the stupid cafe (only place to get food in the building) closes at 6. I go back upstairs and ask the nurses where to get food. They tell me to go across the street back to Robert Wood into their cafe which is open till 8. I manage to find my way there and get some food.
So back with my daughter and her new wheelchair. I put a movie on for her and sit back to relax some. I then get to meet her roommate. The girl is a nice 9 year old and her grandmother is staying with her in the bed that is actually build into her side of the room. Her grandma speaks little English so talking with her is next to impossible. Also there isn’t dual climate control in the room so at night this lady turns the heat up to 80 while I keep it at 70. Every day I have to lower it back to 72-74 and she puts it at 85.
My wife decided to come up and visit with us since her mom is now watching the other 3 kids. When she got to the hospital she parked in the garage next to the hospital. I walk out to meet her and that is when I see the sign for parking prices. $15 a day for parking in the garage. WHAT!!!! I go back upstairs and ask the security about parking and they say they will validate parking for employees but not for parents. I want to punch thru a wall at this point. Earlier in the day I agreed with my mom that she would stay with my daughter while I go to work. My mom will have to pay for parking too so that is $30 a day between us. After only 6 hours in this place I want to take my daughter somewhere else, but because I've been told it is the best for the kids, I hold my tongue.
Alrighty, so that night I get a chance to talk with other parents. No one is happy with the hospital and I hear a bunch of other stories that are not friendly.
The next night my wife brings up the other kids to have dinner with our daughter since we are only allowed 1 hour in the hospital with the new born. About 3 minutes into dinner the night staff comes huffing into the room and tells us to get out of the hospital. I ask why and she says kids under 5 aren't allowed in the hospital. I tell her we have permissions and to check with her boss. She leaves for a couple minutes then comes back and tells us that we have 1 hour. 59 minutes later she is back in the room telling us to leave again, and she brings the male nurses and security. I tell her we are getting the kids packed up. As we leave I say to her "Happy now Bitch!". I take the kids home and my wife stays with our daughter. From that night on whenever that particular nurse was assigned to my daughter to care for her, she never bother to do her job and stayed away from us. So I build such a hatred for this witch (Joy). Other nurses are nice but none of them seem to really know what is going on. There doesn't seem to by any coordination between shifts. The best nurse in my opinion and my daughter's opinion was at night, but we only got to work with her (Justine) occasionally. The nice thing was even on night she wasn't our nurse, she would stop in a check on my daughter.
Another parent suggest to me at some point to ask to be moved to another room where there is a bed that I can sleep on. I ask the head nurse one morning and tell her that she has 2 open rooms with no one in them. She tells me no. She says she can't move my daughter because she has new people coming in. I tell her then give a new person the spot she currently has and move us since I'm here all the time with here. There are a lot of kids here who don't have parents staying with them but have the side of rooms with the bed. She says she'll get back to me. She never does. The next week is the same thing, she'll get back to me and never does.
I hate this place right now. I hate it so much if I had the ability to shut it down, I would.
On to some good things. The only good things about this place are the following. They have all new equipment for the kids to use. They have a lot of board games for the kids to play with. There are select nurses who actually care and will talk with you about your kids condition (most don't). The therapists seem very good. The best team (child life) was my daughter's favorite people but I guess that's because they are all about play :).
2 weeks into our stay:
Nothing has really changed in regards to her care giving. The doctor is never to been seen and the nurses don't ever answer questions about my daughter care. Every time I approach them with a question they go on the defense and say they will ask the doctor.
There is 2 emergencies that happen while where are there too.
1) A girl who is learning to walk again is not spotted when standing up with her crutches and because the nurse failed to spot her, she fell and hit her head very hard resulting in a concussion.
2) A boy who is there from heart attacks goes into a very high pulse 200+ and the alarms go off. I hear it down the hall, but I don't see the nurses rushing to take care of it. Not till the mother comes screaming down the hall do the nurses start to rush. The doctor who was on call took 6-10 minutes to walk down from the floor above to see the child in trouble. Also the medicine that was needed to give the boy, wasn't able to be found easily by the staff. Luckily someone did find the meds and he was given the treatment which brought his heart back under control.
Overall there is a million things more which I can touch on like the single bathroom with a shower in it for parents, a single washing machine for the kids clothing, lack of communication on the staff, etc. There was someone who was assigned as a care coordinator, who we never talked to or bothered to find out how we are doing.
On a scale of 1 to 10 this place gets a 1 from me.
Anyway right now my daughter is back home with us after spending 4 weeks at Children's Specilized and she is scheduled to go to their out-patient in Toms River. Comments (5)
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